Health Committee on April 23rd, 2026

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

No. I'll go after Peter speaks.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Chi, the list is you and then Mr. Fragiskatos. The clerk and I have set up a list based on when people put up their hand. If you wish to pass, I will go to Mr. Fragiskatos, because he's next, but your name won't be on the list again until later on.

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Yes, I'm passing it to Mr. Fragiskatos.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

You are ceding your speaking time. Thank you.

I will go to Mr. Fragiskatos.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London Centre, ON]

Thank you, Madam Chair.

I've already alluded to this. I am not a full member of this committee, although I do follow its work because it is among one of the more important committees on Parliament Hill. How can it not be? We're talking about health and health care.

Obviously, sometimes things go in a different path, and politics take over. I would hope that as much as possible we don't allow that. Perhaps tonight is an exception, or maybe it's the rule. Again, I don't know this committee very well.

Regardless, I see in front of me the motion that Mr. Mazier has put forward. It begins by asking that the committee order “the production of the following documents” and so on and so forth. Then it continues with this: “Contribution agreements concluded with Canada Health Infoway relating to PrescribeIT.”

I will take the time after this meeting to make myself more familiar with the issue at hand. I know that Conservative colleagues have raised the issue in the House of Commons a few times now. I think the media has perhaps followed the story. There's material there for me, and for other substitutes, frankly. I see Mr. Grant with me and Dr. Hanley. All of us can take the time to bring ourselves up to speed, and I'm sure we will.

From a procedural perspective, for this first part, I can't comment on that. I can comment that the call for contribution agreements that have been concluded does present a challenge, because there would be—as I think Conservative colleagues know very well—well over 1,000 documents or perhaps thousands of documents.

This is how production orders work. When you call for documents, because the country is bilingual, you need to have translation carried out. That adds an enormous amount of time to the work that public servants are tasked with. They could be doing, in place of that work, other things in service of Canadians. I have not heard in the House of Commons and have not heard today how assigning that responsibility to public servants is going to advance the agenda of health care in this country.

Across from me, I see Dr. Strauss, who comes from southwestern Ontario, the region I'm from. I know he cares about health care. I know that he will perhaps disagree on certain aspects of health policy, but I know he will agree that public servants play a very important role in the administration of our health care system. How can he defend a motion that would absolutely tie up the public service, not just in producing documents—

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Your name is down, Mr. Strauss.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London Centre, ON]

I promise I wasn't baiting him to speak. It was a mostly rhetorical question. If he wishes to get on the record, I guess he's going to get on the record. That's his right.

How can he get behind a motion that calls for, among other things, public servants to spend an enormous amount of time, hours upon hours at the very least, on this? It could be much longer. With production orders, it often is. The result, of course, would be to have them look in another direction when it comes to what their main responsibility is, which is helping to administer Canada's public health system. That's the first point.

There are other things that are unclear to me, such as “A record of the intellectual property developed under PrescribeIT”. Again, I'm relatively new to the committee. I'm not quite sure why that would be of interest, but colleagues across the aisle can share that with me. Also, there's “adoption data, broken down by province”. Where we could get this data from exactly is the question that comes immediately to mind.

Regardless, let me say something else, and before colleagues across the aisle accuse me of trying to distract from the matter, it does relate to the motion at hand. I was very much looking forward to sitting in today in place of Dr. Eyolfson. The reason is that we heard from witnesses, beginning with Diabetes Canada, who were passionate on any number of things.

Mr. Thibeault kindly mentioned London, where I'm from, a city I that have the honour of representing in the House of Commons. He mentioned Banting House. I was glad he did so. Banting House does tremendous work.

The first part of the meeting created momentum for the second part, which was to focus on an issue that is, I think, important to all of us: pharmaceutical sovereignty in this country. This is something coming out of the pandemic that we all need to think much more about. I know the government is seized with carrying out that goal.

The pandemic left us with many lessons. You, with your expertise in medicine, Madam Chair, have been very clear for years now about the need to prepare this country for all sorts of realities from a health care perspective.

The pandemic left us with many lessons, as I said. One glaring lesson is the need to ensure pharmaceutical sovereignty. We saw what happened to other democracies. We saw what happened at the outset of the pandemic.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Fragiskatos, we are debating the motion—

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London Centre, ON]

Yes, and I'm getting to it.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

There's leeway in debate, but let's focus on just the motion.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London Centre, ON]

I appreciate your brief indulgence, Madam Chair. I will bring it back, I promise you, and I was about to. That was only to say that the pandemic left us with the lesson about pharmaceutical sovereignty.

We were hearing from articulate witnesses who are experts in their fields. I saw colleagues around the table engaged and seized with the issue, but all of a sudden, this motion, which had nothing to do with the second part of the meeting, as I understand it, came up. It could have come up at any other time. There is, I believe—of course there is; every committee has one—a steering committee where that matter could have been addressed.

[An hon. member]

Not in this one.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London Centre, ON]

There's not in this one. Okay. I'm learning as I go. Leave that aside for just a moment.

That could have been raised. The substance of the motion could have been addressed using any other avenue. There are many different avenues that could have allowed for the Conservatives to reach what they're apparently trying to reach, but we lost witnesses as a result. Witnesses took time out of their day to be here. In the case of Ms. Michaud, I'm not sure where she was travelling from, but it took her an entire day of planning.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Mr. Fragiskatos, bring it back, please, to the motion at hand.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London Centre, ON]

I'm bringing it back. I promise.

The point is, what do we have in front of us? We don't have a meeting in front of us. We have Mr. Mazier's motion in front of us. With contribution agreements concluded, I'm not sure how that advances.... Maybe he can explain it for me. Again, I'm sitting in today on the committee. Maybe he can explain how the production of thousands of documents will advance the public interest for his constituents, for my constituents, for Dr. Strauss's constituents and for all of our constituents. I don't see it, but I hope to be informed on the subject.

I heard Ms. Chi, who has done excellent work as a parliamentary secretary, navigating at this committee a very complex set of priorities that the committee, in its wisdom, has identified as important and vital to take up. She was making a number of points and was interrupted along the way, unfortunately. I hope that in the time we have remaining, we don't have that happen again. That would be my hope. We will see what happens.

I know she's next on the list, Madam Chair, but I'll conclude my initial intervention by simply saying that I would love to hear an answer from Conservative colleagues on how the production of thousands of documents that will tie up the public service—not just for hours and hours, as I said before, but for much longer, if we want to be honest—advances the public interest. How does that do anything to advance what this committee is doing?

This committee has a mandate from Parliament to take up matters of health care and health policy. We will see where things go.

I turn it back to you, Madam Chair. I think Ms. Chi wants to get on the record.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Chi has been on the record already.

[Peter Fragiskatos, Liberal, London Centre, ON]

She wanted to be on the list, and I think she is. There you go.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

She's on the list. I am keeping a list, Mr. Fragiskatos, with the help of the clerk.

Next on the list is Mr. Strauss.

[Matt Strauss, Conservative, Kitchener South—Hespeler, ON]

Thank you.

I'm so eager to answer my long-winded friend's questions.

When you blow $300 million, you need to find out how you blew it so you don't blow it again. At the last committee meeting, we found out that the government is planning on giving the same totally incompetent, possibly corrupt organization, Canada Health Infoway, another $50 million for its pivot operation. We'd save $350 million by getting to the bottom of this and not making that sort of mistake again.

As for the time it takes to translate, you have a Minister of Artificial Intelligence. Perhaps he can be made aware that we can do AI translation now. It takes five minutes. It shouldn't take any time at all. Canadians want us to get to the bottom of this.

There are about 50 people in this room. You all have only one life. It's such a crying shame that we're spending it listening to very long speeches in order to prevent the production of these documents. I saw the Prime Minister in a scrum explain that he needs to have majorities on committees so he can prevent filibusters, which his own team is doing right now in order to hide a $300-million scandal.

Thank you, Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Thank you, Mr. Strauss.

Before we go any further, I will let you know that we have resources only for the time I told you earlier on. I would like to point out to this committee that we are speaking to the motion on the floor. We have already decided that the motion is in order. It is here. We need to speak to the motion.

The issue of resources was brought up. Is this the best way to use our resources? This committee has spent every single meeting going one to two hours over time just because we have resources. It's spinning its wheels and doing all kinds of things. I would like to see us respect the role of the standing committee, as everyone would. A standing committee is supposed to get work done.

The motion is in order. I would like people to speak to the motion.

Go ahead, Ms. Chi.

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I really appreciate my colleague's comments around diverting time away from the study that was on the schedule. It's experienced many forms of delays. Our witnesses came, but unfortunately we couldn't finish the rounds of questioning. It happened again. We've seen it time and time again.

We are the Standing Committee on Health. As members we all agreed to the mandate and essence of what the committee does. We are here to examine programs and policies that matter to the health of the nation.

I don't know about folks around the table. When you have a motion that calls for the production of papers with thousands of pages, there are details that pour into data numbers. We have committees exactly for that.

It puzzles me why the Conservative members continue to use this committee to hunt for information, when they could hunt elsewhere. We could actually get back to the agenda of the health committee to finish the agreed upon schedule regarding the Liberal study on pharmaceutical sovereignty. That's the first point I really want to make.

Second, to my colleagues here, as you said, Chair, we are staying for extra time and extra hours. How does it respect a member's time when someone brings forward a motion that interrupts the time of a witness?

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

Ms. Chi, we are speaking to the motion, please.

[Maggie Chi, Liberal, Don Valley North, ON]

I'll come back to the motion.

I'm sure colleagues across the aisle have an interest in the matter, which is the interoperability piece on the data. PrescribeIT is part of the larger effort around this, so let's talk about that. Let's talk about the larger digital health context, which this committee could consider. If we want to understand PrescribeIT as a program, I don't think we can just understand it on its own. There's a larger picture. There's a larger road map that as a nation we need to consider.

Earlier this week, we called upon Canada Health Infoway to answer questions around the program. There is a larger, shared, pan-Canadian interoperability road map, which makes it clear that the real issue is much broader than just one program or one dataset.

Physicians around this table who have experienced frustrations around data—interoperability of systems and sharing patient data—will agree that the real issue here is that we need to build a system. We need to build a system in which the digital tools actually connect to each other, in which information can move safely and meaningfully across settings and in which patients and providers are being served by systems that work together rather than against each other.

That's the broader theme and frame I want us to keep in mind as we consider this topic. That's why I'm going to keep returning to the road map as I speak about this particular program. PrescribeIT matters in that discussion, not because the road map is a report about PrescribeIT. It's not. The road map is a report about the larger structure of interoperability in Canada.

The report also makes reference to PrescribeIT in ways that are revealing. The appendix of the report notes that Canada has “made important progress in integrating community pharmacy and primary care prescribers”, and specifically cites this program. Elsewhere, it indicates that the deployment of the program was expected to expand to support hospital discharge prescriptions. In its stakeholder discussions, it notes that Infoway has discussed the potential value of digital tools, including with various organizations. Together in the larger system, we all want an integrated system, as we heard from today's witness from the pharmacy association.

With that, Madam Chair, I move that the meeting be now adjourned.

[The Chair, Liberal, Hedy Fry]

It's not debatable. There is a motion to adjourn.

Everyone seems to agree. I hear nobody saying no.

(Motion agreed to)

The meeting is adjourned.