While the 2nd wave of COVID-19 surges, Parliament has passed a motion instructing its health committee to check out the government’s handling of the very first wave.
It was Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner’s motion, however all four opposition celebrations, and all independent MPs, consisting of previous Liberal justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould, supported it.
Simply recently the Conservatives utilized among their opposition days to provide a motion proposing an unique committee to examine the WE charity affair and other associated matters, but it didn’t fly..
Prime Minister Trudeau warned, at the time, that his government would consider such a movement a vote of non-confidence. He would call an election if it passed. The New Democrats sided with the Liberals on that one, and spared all of us the experience of a coast-to-coast pandemic campaign..
The federal government did not deem Rempel Garner’s motion to be a matter of confidence. The Liberals battled mightily versus it, the motion passed easily on Monday afternoon.
Liberals say sharing sensitive documents might threaten vaccine production.
Now, the Commons health committee– on which, because this is a minority Parliament, there are more opposition MPs than Liberals– has a huge job..
The list of the problems it need to consider is long. It extends to 15 items, including: the method testing has been executed, the advancement of a vaccine, procedures for long-lasting care, the adequacy of health transfers to the provinces, the advice the World Health Company provided the federal government in early 2020, and the availability of individual protective devices (PPE).
The Trudeau government is barely keen on having members of Parliament sort through the inner operations of its handling of a virus about which we knew precious little at the start. Inevitably, a great deal of the federal government’s choices will look, today, to have actually been dubious and even, at times, risky. We now have the power of hindsight.
However that is not what a lot of rankles the Liberals. What really worries them is the even longer list of documents and in-depth details the federal government need to now provide to the health committee..
That list consists of all of the government’s memos, emails, notes and other documents related to the management of pandemic. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and the Privy Council Office (PCO), which co-ordinates the work of all federal government departments in combination with the PMO, will have to provide the product, as will the departments of Health, Procurement, and the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Among the files the government must now share are its exchanges with corporations that offer PPE, or are working on a vaccine or are dealing, in other methods, with the pandemic. That actually bugs the private sector. There could be corporate secrets or exclusive details at stake, they say..
On the eve of the vote on Rempel Garner’s movement, Procurement Minister Anita Anand held a news conference to alert of its risks.
” If this motion passes,” she stated, “the ability of the federal government to acquire and purchase PPE, vaccines and quick test packages will be threatened, duration, both on a domestic and worldwide level. The movement threatens our negotiations and contracts, along with our government’s leading priority, which is to safeguard Canadians from COVID-19″.
Anand related the severe issues of the Pfizer pharmaceutical business, which is a possible vaccine supplier, and, on a wider level, those of the Canadian Association of Manufacturers..
Federal government MPs want to return to ‘old ways of not handling Parliament’.
Opposition MPs were not impressed with those arguments– although Conservatives are normally highly conscious the concerns of the business sector. Nor were opposition MPs impressed with the Liberals’ other primary argument: that supplying all the files needed would be a problem on the general public service at a time when its attention need to be on dealing with the pandemic’s 2nd wave.
As Michelle Rempel Garner put it:.
” The function of a parliamentary committee is to look at these concerns and come up with suggestions on the finest course forward. It will be undesirable to Canadians for the government to provide weak sauce reasons that a committee, the health committee, can not study the pandemic throughout the pandemic.”.
NDP MP Charlie Angus harkened back to last spring, at the start of the coronavirus crisis, when Parliament decided to reconstitute itself in a new method, and put aside all traces of partisanship to act collaboratively:.
” When the pandemic hit, all of us were deeply unpredictable,” Angus told the House. “We had no concept what we were entering into. There was a minute where I thought Parliament
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