Health committee  No. That's a different role from in the provinces. The provinces have more power because they're doing this as day-to-day operations of public health.

Health committee  Yes, absolutely. It's a disease. It's threatening human health. It's threatening supply chains. There is no question.

Health committee  Absolutely. I think it satisfies the definition of a public welfare emergency.

Health committee  I think that's exactly what we're seeing right now with the vast disparity between different provincial rates, the spread of the variant and the seeming inability they have to keep people out of their province—apart from the Maritimes. All those things point to an inability to manage this at the provincial level.

Health committee  In the provinces, the chief medical officers of health, for the most part—I'll speak broadly, but there's interprovincial variation—have the sweeping power to do almost anything necessary to contain a communicable disease. In the law, they're very powerful. Where it gets complicated is the politics.

Health committee  Yes. Absolutely there are provisions around that. The declaration of the emergency is time-limited and has to be renewed. That helps with that. There is also parliamentary oversight in the Emergencies Act that doesn't exist with, as I say, some of the provincial public health rules that have been enacted and that wasn't present in the previous War Measures Act.

Health committee  The provinces can regulate travel within their provinces. Many have that in their public health act as an emergency power that can be done in a public health emergency. Many have it in their emergencies act provincially, but there does seem to be this reticence among some to use it.

Health committee  It is. I think where the provinces have struggled is that they know they can do it intraprovincially, but it's not clear what that means when it's right at the border, when you have somebody crossing over right at the border. We know that the Atlantic travel ban has been the subject of litigation, but only on the charter front.

Health committee  Many of the public health measures we see right now raise those kinds of civil liberties issues. It's not clear how the federal government doing those sorts of things versus the provinces doing those sorts of things jeopardizes civil liberties more. All of this, of course, is subject to the charter.

Health committee  It depends what you're talking about imposing. Certainly some things might be more palatable than others for the provinces to accept federal involvement in. One of the things, though, that comes to my mind as being the most obvious role for a federal government in this space would be—

Health committee  Sure. The travel issue is one very obvious example. We had B.C. saying they didn't know if they could prohibit travel across the Alberta border. They needed legal advice. They weren't sure. Meanwhile, on one side of the border, we have Banff, which is one of Canada's hot spots, and on the B.C. side, there are much lower rates.

Health committee  Before I start, I want to thank you all for the opportunity to speak with the committee today. I'll begin by first discussing the specific legal avenues open to the federal government before turning to some more general comments on the role of the federal government in the pandemic.