THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON SOCIAL AFFAIRS, SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, November 22, 2017
The Standing Senate Committee on Social Affairs, Science and Technology met this day at 4:15 p.m., pursuant to rule 12-13 of the Rules of the Senate, to organize the activities of the committee.
[English]
Shaila Anwar, Clerk of the Committee: Honourable senators, pursuant to the order of the Senate of November 7, 2017, there is a vacancy in the chair. As the clerk of your committee, it is therefore my duty to preside over the election of the chair. I’m ready to receive a motion to that effect.
Senator Seidman: I move that our chair be Senator Art Eggleton.
Ms. Anwar: Are there any other nominations, senators?
It is moved by the Honourable Senator Seidman that the Honourable Senator Eggleton do take the chair of this committee.
Is it your pleasure, honourable senators, to adopt the motion?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
Ms. Anwar: I declare the motion carried.
Senator Art Eggleton (Chair) in the chair.
The Chair: Thank you very much. I’m grateful for the honour to be able to chair this committee. It’s one I have been involved with since right back to the beginning.
I first joined when Michael Kirby was the chair. That was a dozen years ago, and it’s the centre of much of my activity in the Senate, the issues of social justice, which I’ve particularly focused on.
So I’m happy to be back in the chair, and I appreciate Senator Seidman’s nomination. Judith and I have worked together for a number of years on the steering committee, so I’m looking forward to continuing that, with Chantal Petitclerc, who joined us in the last committee. So now it will be the three of us. We’ll come to that a little later. That’s a motion that comes later.
Also, let me say welcome to the new members. Senator Munson has been here before, but welcome back. Senator Poirier and Senator Bernard, welcome, and to all the rest of you who are returning.
The next bit of business is the election of deputy chairs. We are now allotted two deputy chairs. Could I have nominations for the two deputy chairs?
Senator Poirier: I would nominate Senator Seidman for the first deputy chair.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Poirier.
Senator Seidman: I would nominate Senator Petitclerc for the second.
The Chair: Senator Petitclerc is nominated for the second deputy chair position. Are there any other nominations? I declare nominations closed. Congratulations to both Senator Seidman and Senator Petitclerc.
One last formal bit of business, and then I want to discuss a little bit of informal stuff, only about five minutes. The Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure, which is the formal name of what we usually call the steering committee -- if I could have somebody move that Senator Seidman, Senator Petitclerc and me —
Senator Munson: I so move.
The Chair: So moved. The motion formally moves, moved by Senator Munson, that the Subcommittee on Agenda and Procedure be composed of a chair and two deputy chairs and that the subcommittee be empowered to make decisions on behalf of the committee with respect to its agenda, to invite witnesses and to schedule hearings. That’s standard wording used in all the committees. Is that agreed, colleagues?
Hon. Senators: Agreed.
The Chair: Thank you.
Now we come to other business. I just want to point out where we’re at in terms of a couple of things. Some papers will come around.
The first piece of paper deals with legislation that is either here or could come here. Most of it hasn’t been determined to come here yet, and most of it is still in the Senate. But there is one bill here already, and that’s Bill C-36. That’s the Statistics Canada bill that has come through second reading and been referred here.
At the conclusion of this meeting, we will have a steering committee meeting in which we’ll lay out the schedule and work plan for dealing with Bill C-36, and hopefully we’ll start that next Wednesday, with the minister visiting and the Chief Statistician being here as well. That’s on Bill C-36.
We need to find some point on the schedule for Bill C-234. It’s a private member’s bill, obviously, a senator who is no longer here, Senator Moore, but I’m sure he would love to come back and tell us why we should have an artist laureate. I assume the artist is a painter, but it doesn’t specify. It could be a musician, I suppose. Anyway, that bill hasn’t been scheduled yet, and we’ll find some time to put that on.
The next section gets interesting because it deals with bills that are before the Senate. Some of the parts of them, or maybe all of the parts of those bills, do come within the mandate of this committee and could possibly be referred here. Bill C-25 was just debated today. I don’t know if it will come here. What other options are there for that bill?
Ms. Anwar: It could also go to Finance or Banking.
The Chair: It sounds like it might be more appropriate there. Bill C-46 is determined to go to Legal at this point in time, and that’s probably where it properly belongs.
Then you see these other bills. Some of them have been sitting around for a long time. Senator Hervieux-Payette is not even a senator any longer. Some of them have been sitting around for some period of time in the Senate, and they may or may not end up coming here. We’ve got them on this list just in case.
The next section is bills before the house that could also be considered within the mandate of our committee. SOCI, for the newcomers, is our shortened version, our acronym. Bill C-45, the famous Bill C-45, Tony is spearheading that one. If that ends up coming here, it could eat up a lot of time. I tend to believe that should go to Legal, but other people decide these things, people in the leadership.
Senator Munson: If it comes here, I suggest we travel to find out exactly what’s going on out there in the cannabis environment across the country.
The Chair: You’re talking about sampling, as well?
Senator Munson: No, not anymore.
The Chair: Anyway, I’m not encouraging it to come here, but that’s an open question at this point. Of course, it’s not out of the house yet, and Tony is trying to turn somersaults to see how it could all get dealt with in a reasonable period of time. When it comes to us, it will come on the eve of our holiday adjournment, virtually.
Anyway, so much for that one. There are some others; there’s nothing at report stage, but at committee stage we have drinking water guidelines. That’s at the Health Committee.
Ms. Anwar: It’s at the Health Committee. On our side, it could go to the Aboriginal Committee. Again, these are bills that might end up before Social, but they could very well be referred elsewhere.
The Chair: We have to bear that in mind all the time. Just looking at this, don’t automatically think it’s coming here. Then there are government bills at second reading, the famous Bill C-27, but if that goes anywhere, it will go to Finance.
The one you think might come here — there’s always the possibility of a pre-study on Bill C-63, the budget implementation act.
Ms. Anwar: Notice was given today by the government in the Senate.
The Chair: On the pre-study?
Ms. Anwar: Yes, and Social is identified for two different divisions.
The Chair: Whether it’s a pre-study or the study, we’re going to get two divisions of it, most likely. We do usually get a division or two or three of a budget implementation bill. What are Divisions 8 and 9?
Ms. Anwar: Labour Code.
The Chair: Yes, that’s us. If you wonder what social affairs includes, it’s quite a few things. It includes immigration, the Labour Code, health. Health is one of our biggest subjects, and we don’t even have it in the name of the committee.
Then there’s Bill C-65, workplace harassment. These are bills, though, that are at second reading over in the House of Commons. This is just to give you an idea of what’s possible. At least half of those will never come here probably. Any questions about that?
One other piece of paper I’d like to give you is a list of all the studies this committee has done. I said I’ve been here 12 years, and I’m proud of the fact that this committee, people of different political persuasions and values, et cetera, have managed to come to an agreement. I think all of these, certainly the ones I remember, were unanimously approved by this committee and then they were approved by the Senate. At times we’ve fought like cats and dogs over government legislation, but when it came to doing evidence-based studies, I think we have a terrific record of coming up with some great recommendations, and a lot of them have found their way into government legislation. There are a lot of things on here that I think we can be proud of.
The reason I give you this is not to go into nostalgia too long but simply to say it’s time to look at what we’re going to do next in terms of a study. We just finished the study on robots, artificial intelligence and 3-D printing in the health care systems, and we’re now open for consideration about what we want to do next. I don’t think in the field we cover that there’s any shortage of possibilities of things we can do. I have two or three ideas myself that I’ll put out there, but I want to invite you to put ideas out as well. When we get a few -- let’s say over the next week think about it, or you may already have an idea and just need to write it up -- we can then have a meeting somewhere down the road, not too long, and go over these possibilities. The steering committee would probably get them first so that we can get some sense of how long and how practical they are so that when we get to the full committee discussion of them, we have as much information as possible for you to make a decision as a committee.
Are there any questions or comments about that?
Supplementary to this list of the study reports, this document was sent out to committee members yesterday, and it gives a little more detail about these different studies. If you want to read any of them, it tells you how to find them.
I have nothing else to say. This will be the shortest meeting ever; I guarantee you that.
I paid tribute to him previously, both in the Senate and in this committee, but Kelvin Ogilvie was a terrific chair of this committee, and we appreciated all the work that he did. I’m pleased to have worked with him and, now, to take over as the chair. Thank you very much, everyone.
(The committee adjourned.)