The Standing Committee on Health sat through the entire pandemic. It's one of the only committees to have done so, and there are three of us MPs here who lived through the pandemic on the committee without ever looking to blame anyone. Instead, we looked for solutions.
I believe that Bill C‑293 puts the cart before the horse and that we must first know what happened before claiming to have solutions. For example, how can we explain that the global public health information network could have been so ineffective, failing to raise the red flag in time and allow personal protective equipment to be sent to China, when our own stockpile was empty? The fact that in Quebec our CHSLDs, our long term care centres, ran out of masks had consequences.
Getting the answer to this question seems important to me, and I don't think an advisory committee could get to the bottom of the issue. Without looking for culprits, we first need to know what we've done, what we could do differently, and then propose a plan of action. A law won't fix this; we already have everything we need to do so.
Do you have any comments on the matter, Dr. Barrett?