I am, frankly, very distressed about how this meeting today has been handled. I feel, as a member of Parliament, that this is a matter of privilege for me.
I had a notice of meeting at 5:51 a.m. I am a British Columbia member. At 5:51 a.m. yesterday, I received a notice of meeting that said this meeting was going to proceed at the normal time, which for you in Ontario may be 11:00 a.m., but for me in British Columbia is 8:00 a.m.
To have it moved to an hour earlier at the end of the day.... The second notice of meeting came, in my time, at 2:18 p.m., which is 5:18 p.m. Ontario time. I wasn't expecting, after the normal close of the business day to receive from Ontario another notice without consultation, without discussion, without any kind of warning. In fact, my whole day from early in the morning—6:30 a.m., in fact, yesterday—was all scheduled right up until 7:00 p.m. in the evening. I didn't see the second notice of meeting requiring me to be here a whole hour earlier, which I wasn't expecting, until last evening.
I am in my constituency office now, where all my binders are, because this is important committee work. I can't just plug in and listen; I have to have my binders ready, as you all do. I have to have all the amendments in front of me. I have to be ready to go.
Just to put that in context, from the time I get up until I arrive at my constituency office is over an hour, so to be at a committee meeting a whole hour early with extremely short notice means I'm getting up at 5:15 in the morning.
I realize there are some other people here on this call who are from British Columbia as well. I don't know their personal circumstances. I don't know how far they live from their constituency offices. Maybe they have this all set up at home, but I don't have all this set up at home.
You go through a long monologue before every meeting about hybrid sessions, and we have agreed in the present circumstances to be sitting in a hybrid session. There should be more flexibility and more courtesy paid, frankly, to those of us in a time zone that's three hours earlier with respect to how we attend these meetings, how we prepare for these meetings, and what is required of us.
I want to be prepared. I want to be ready. I don't want to waste time once I'm here. This is the way one has to be.
With all due respect, Madam Chair, you may have the ultimate authority to do this. I don't even know if you do. You're telling us you do, but to do it on such short notice, to do it after a notice of meeting with the normal time was already sent out and people's schedules are set....
I'm three hours earlier. I know there are people on this call who are an hour later or an hour and a half later, perhaps. Everyone is busy. Everyone has schedules. By doing what you have done in this arbitrary fashion—I don't believe there was a subcommittee meeting, or even a request for one—you have left me at a distinct disadvantage.
My understanding is that the whole idea here should be that we work together, we co-operate together, we recognize that it is necessary to do certain things for us to carry out our duties and our responsibilities. This is a very big country. There are a lot of people watching these proceedings who are vitally interested in a piece of legislation that is going to dramatically change the health landscape of living and dying for Canadians from coast to coast to coast. To take a unilateral action announced at the end of the day and expect us to adjust everything and be ready to go, for me, very early in the morning—
Mr. Manly said something about maybe the sun coming up. He's from Nanaimo—Ladysmith—which, by the way, Mr. Manly, is my hometown—but when I looked out the window, it was completely dark, with a very empty parking lot here, because obviously the sun comes up on Vancouver Island before it hits the mainland.
These are the realities of trying to do these committee meetings in hybrid settings. We're all doing our best. With all due respect to those of you sitting in Ontario right now, you can't just do this and expect people in a time zone with a three-hour difference to just adjust on a moment's notice. It's not fair. It's a huge barrier to my full participation in committee meetings. It interferes with and impedes my ability to participate fully as a member of Parliament. It is my right and privilege as an elected official to voice the concerns of my constituents, and particularly on this bill there are many, as we've heard in witness testimony and in our discussions so far.
I appreciate that on the government side you want all this to happen really quickly, but this is a very, very important piece of legislation. It was your party, with all due respect, that prorogued Parliament. You did not do the review in June that you should have. Our colleague Mr. Garrison is completely right that this should have gone ahead, and should now go ahead, in an expedient manner, because you're now trying to push us—even to the point of, in my view, a breach of my privilege—to get something through that there was time to deal with. There was time to hear more witnesses. There was time to do this in a proper way. Now you're acting as though you can just do what you want.
I sat on the justice committee in an earlier Parliament. In fact, I had Mr. Virani's role. I know it's a tough one, so I send Mr. Virani my heartfelt sympathies. It's a big job. I did it for two years. Never once in those two years did the chair of the justice committee at that time do something like this, and that was when we were all able to be there in person.
This is not the way to foster co-operation. It's not the way to have us move forward in a timely, co-operative fashion. Frankly, once a notice of meeting is sent, I don't think anyone is sitting by their computer waiting, 12 hours later, to get a different one. I could very easily have missed this. The reason I didn't was that my colleague Mr. Moore sent an email about it, and I looked at his email. I had no reason to look at a further notice of meeting, thinking that there would be a different one. As I said, because it was so late in the day, I didn't even see it until yesterday evening.
I want this point of privilege to be regarded, and I want to, frankly, hear some discussion, because I don't think we can continue in this manner.
There are two things I'm looking for from you. I will move a motion to report this matter of privilege to the House to report your actions. I really don't want to do that, because it could delay important proceedings before this committee. I'd rather deal with it here and now by having you un-breach my privileges with the following three actions.
First, I think you should apologize for unilaterally impeding my ability to fully participate in this committee by your end-of-day, short-notice readjustment of the committee's meeting time.
Two, you should agree publicly, right now, to never unilaterally move the start time of a committee meeting unless so ordered by this committee. That at least should be a matter of prior discussion, and the time should not be earlier. It's one thing when we're getting into it and you canvass the committee and we say that we're all willing to sit another 15 or 30 minutes, but to make it earlier, in a hybrid setting, when you have British Columbia members, isn't right.
It is our duty and our job to have everything set up. We've been told this over and over again. If I don't have proper Wi-Fi, if I don't have a proper set-up, that's on me. In my case, I have to go to my constituency office because I cannot always rely on my connectivity at my home. I don't have that option.
The third thing is that you confirm on the record, at risk of contempt of Parliament if you do not provide the full truth, that you had zero conversation with the Minister of Justice or his staff, the Prime Minister or his staff or the House leader and the respective staff in which the topic of moving this committee meeting to 10:00 a.m. was discussed.
Thank you.