HEAL Committee Meeting

STANDING COMMITTEE ON HEALTH

COMITÉ PERMANENT DE LA SANTÉ

EVIDENCE

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

Tuesday, October 2, 2001

• 1533

[English]

The Clerk of the Committee: I see a quorum. Pursuant to Standing Orders 106(1) and 106(2), your first item of business is to elect a chair. I am ready to receive motions to that effect.

[Translation]

Ms. Yolande Thibeault (Saint-Lambert, Lib.): I'd like to recommend that we join together in nominating Ms. Bonnie Brown as the Chair of our committee. I'm confident that I have the support of each and everyone of you. Thank you.

The Clerk: Ms. Thibeault moves that Ms. Brown be elected Chair of the committee.

Mr. Réal Ménard (Hochelaga—Maisonneuve, BQ): We'll second the motion.

[English]

The Clerk: Are the members ready for the question? It is moved by Madame Thibeault that Ms. Brown do take the chair of the committee as chair.

(Motion agreed to)

The Clerk: I declare the motion carried and Bonnie Brown duly elected chair of the committee. I invite Bonnie Brown to take the chair.

• 1535

Some hon. members: Hear, hear!

The Chair (Ms. Bonnie Brown (Oakville, Lib.)): Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your vote of confidence.

It's with pleasure that I do this, although as all of you who have been here before know, this is a difficult assignment we have been given by the minister. We go forward together with humility, I think, in the face of the issues we face.

I'm going to call for nominations for the vice-chairs.

Ms. Judy Sgro (York West, Lib.): I'd like to nominate Reg Alcock for vice-chair.

The Chair: Mr. Alcock has been appointed to this committee but is not here today.

Mr. Mauril Bélanger (Ottawa—Vanier, Lib.): I'm replacing him.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy (Calgary—Nose Hill, Canadian Alliance): I'd like to nominate Rob Merrifield as a second vice-chair.

The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Ablonczy.

Mrs. Diane Ablonczy: Maybe that's out of order.

The Chair: I think it's okay. I don't think there's going to be any fuss.

I'll call the first motion first, on the nomination of Mr. Alcock as vice-chair.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chair: Mr. Alcock will be one vice-chair.

On the second motion to nominate Mr. Merrifield, seeing no other nominations, I'll call the question.

(Motion agreed to)

The Chair: Congratulations, Mr. Merrifield, who has served us well.

Mr. Rob Merrifield (Yellowhead, Canadian Alliance): Thank you.

The Chair: Thank you to Mr. Bélanger for coming to replace Mr. Alcock.

I have just a small item of business. I called a few people to tell them this would not be a full meeting. It is not our regular time. When we were assigned this time by the clerk, there was nothing we could do to get it back to 11 a.m.—“the Clerk of the House”, Gary wants me to say.

He is going to try to get in the Hamilton Spectator again soon. That made him quite famous for a while there, but he didn't want to get in on this issue.

In any case, as I promised you at the first meeting we had in September, we have to do a bit of a review. We will do a review in two ways. One of the reviews we've already begun. That is an exercise of clarification with the Health Canada officials who first brought the proposed legislation to us. In hearing from witnesses, certain things came up around definitions. There was a certain fuzziness we wanted clarified.

The researchers devised a list of questions, which we thought we might get through in a meeting. We've already had two, and we'll have to have another one. But I think it will help the new members to this committee.

The second review is going to happen at our next meeting, which executive fiat suggests be tomorrow. The clerk will send a notice as soon as this meeting is over. He couldn't send a notice for tomorrow until I had been elected chair.

In order to replace this morning's meeting, I thought we'd take that slot at 3:30 p.m. Wednesday. We'll then proceed with the paper called the “Summary of Evidence”, which the researchers have prepared. For all the new members reading through what certain witnesses said about certain topics, it will serve as a bit of a review. Tomorrow we will go through that with the researchers.

As soon as Gary gets back to his office, he will e-mail that summary of evidence to each of your offices.

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Can I ask you to read it through once tonight, and can I ask the experienced members to read it a little more closely and make notes to themselves, so we can proceed through it at the meeting tomorrow? In other words, we're not going to read it together. We're going to go page by page and respond to what you saw in it when you read it.

The other thing we'll do tomorrow is look at a proposed work plan. Are you sending that out too, or will that be given out tomorrow?

The Clerk: That will go out at the same time.

The Chair: Okay. At the same time, Gary will e-mail you a proposed work plan for the period from now until Christmas. I want you to look at that because while we were waiting for the new committee list and for this day of electing chairs and vice-chairs, I asked the research staff to please put it together, but it is for your approval. So have a look at it with regard to your own schedules and just see how it all fits in.

Mr. Manning called me a couple of times in the summer to tell me he was afraid we weren't going to get through the work, and he wanted to propose extra meetings. In fact, he was prescient because just trying to get through the topics we have to cover and get the witnesses here, it does look like this committee may have to meet Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday. You'll see that on the proposed work plan. But again, we need to have it approved before we can move forward.

The other point in the work plan is that in the next session...“session” is the wrong word. I always group the weeks when Parliament is sitting. We're in the third week of the first session, the way I think, and then we come back after Thanksgiving and have a four-week session.

In the third week of that four-week session we're proposing to travel. We know you have other committees and other commitments. I know, for example, that Ms. Sgro is going to take her urban task force out on the two break weeks—the week after Thanksgiving and the week of November 11. I didn't want to back her up against those two trips, so I put our trip sort of in the middle of that period. You can be away and be home, and be away and be home. There may be other people with similar kinds of issues.

Mr. Ménard.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: In fact, when we began our work, we weren't expecting to meet very often on Wednesdays. Admittedly, we do have a lot our plate to justify getting together that frequently, but the fact of the matter is that many of us serve on other committees as well. I'm wondering if you would...

As I was saying, when we began our work, we hadn't planned on meeting very often on Wednesday afternoons. I realize that we have a full agenda and that this may be reason enough, not to mention that this is an emotional issue. I think many of us are greatly interested in the whole issue of new reproductive technologies, but I think for now we should confine ourselves to considering committee business and the e-mail that you will be sending us on Thursday morning.

I know I won't be here tomorrow because the committee on drugs is meeting as well and I can't be in two places at the same time. That's a given. I think this would also give us a little more time to familiarize ourselves with this material. I don't know whether this will make much of a difference overall in our planning. Therefore, could we possibly agree to look at our work calendar Thursday morning, instead of Wednesday afternoon?

[English]

The Chair: You're looking for a second meeting on Thursday and not one on Wednesday. Is that it? That's what I heard him say—just the schedule.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: No. I realize the committee has to meet and Wednesday afternoon is fine. Personally, I won't be there, but the issue is whether to meet simply to review our work plan or to hear from witnesses.

[English]

The Chair: So it's the work plan. The witnesses scheduled for tomorrow afternoon are our own researchers, who will take us through the summary of evidence. There's a booklet called the “Summary of Evidence” they've written, on evidence to the end of June—what we heard last spring. Then as a second part of tomorrow's meeting, I was going to do the work plan.

This is what we can do, Mr. Ménard. We'll look at the work plan and hear comments about the work plan, but we won't approve it until Thursday when you're there. How's that?

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Mr. Réal Ménard: Okay.

The Chair: So get the work plan off the e-mail. If you have suggestions, phone them to the clerk so he can bring them to my attention. Hopefully, by Thursday morning, we'll have a package we can approve for the rest of the fall.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: I can tell you right away, Madam Chair, that I was planning to table a motion, or rather give notice of motion, if I can do that informally.

I would very much like committee members to visit some fertility clinics here in Ottawa. I think it's important for us to do that to further our understanding of the issue. We've all heard about certain kinds of technologies, but I think the picture will become clearer for all of us once we've seen first hand what goes on in the lab. Therefore, if this isn't already part of our work plan, I'm announcing that on Thursday, I will be tabling a motion to this effect. I would imagine this has to be included in our plan, but...

[English]

The Chair: I don't think we need a motion because it seems to me the researchers are putting that in place. If there is a specific place you want us to go, maybe you should send the clerk a note. Do you have a specific...no.

[Translation]

Mr. Réal Ménard: An Ottawa clinic.

[English]

The Chair: Okay. That's what the researchers had in mind.

Are there any other questions about what's coming? Tomorrow is the meeting to go through the summary of evidence prepared by our own researchers and have a first crack at the work plan. Then we'll bring the work plan back on Thursday morning, so Mr. Ménard can be part of the voting. We'll vote and hopefully approve it, or an amended version of it.

Then we'll go on to the people from Health Canada, who will take us through the final portion of our.... You know how we've been questioning them, those who have been around. We've been questioning them, and have gone through about one-third of the thing at each meeting. So I'm hoping on Thursday to finish that, and then we'll start fresh when we come back with some fresh witnesses.

Are there any questions or comments?

Mr. Stan Dromisky (Thunder Bay—Atikokan, Lib.): Do we have any idea what room we're going to meet in tomorrow?

The Chair: Probably not.

Mr. Stan Dromisky: What building?

The Clerk: We're really scrabbling for that. We did find a room, but off the top of my head I can't remember where it was. It will be on the notice. It may be in the Promenade Building.

The Chair: Oh no. We're not going to the Promenade Building.

The Clerk: It is either the Promenade Building or the East Block.

The Chair: The East Block has some nice meeting rooms.

The Clerk: Would you prefer that we go to the East Block?

The Chair: Yes. The Promenade Building is lacking in oxygen, I remember.

Are there any other questions? Just get your staff to pick all this off the e-mail and you'll be all set.

Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. This meeting is adjourned.