I call the meeting to order.  Welcome to the third meeting of the House of Commons Special Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic. Pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, April20, the committee is meeting for the purposes of considering ministerial announcements, allowing members to present petitions, and questioning ministers of the crown, including the Prime Minister, in respect of the COVID-19 pandemic. I understand there's an agreement to observe a moment of silence in memory of the six members of the Canadian Armed Forces who lost their lives last Wednesday in a helicopter crash off the coast of Greece.  We'll return to order. Colleagues, we meet today to continue our discussion about how our country is dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. As we do, Canadians, like everyone around the world, are doing their best to live their lives until things improve. Meanwhile, as we look towards the future, I believe that it is also important to remember our past and to continue to mark the important moments in our shared history. At this very moment, the Dominion Carillonneur, Dr. Andrea McCrady, is performing a special recital to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands by the Canadian Forces. In May 1945, Canadian Forces played a major role in liberating the Dutch people from Nazi occupation. May 5 is now a national holiday in the Netherlands that commemorates the event and the great friendship that now exists between our two countries. Today's meeting is taking place by video conference. The proceedings will be made available via the House of Commons website. Please be aware that the webcast will always show the person speaking rather than the entire committee. Let me remind you that, as in the House or in committee, members may not take photographs of their colleagues or film the proceedings. In order to facilitate the work of our interpreters and ensure orderly meetings, I will outline a few rules. Interpretation of this video conference will be done as it is at normal committee meetings and in the House. At the bottom of your screen, you can choose floor, English or French. As you have seen, I change as I am speaking. I have now switched over to English in order to speak English. If you look at the bottom, you have a little flag that indicates whether it's English or French, and that's how we will be speaking. It makes it easier. That was where we had a little bit of a glitch in the last session. I understand that there are no statements by ministers. We can now proceed to presenting petitions for a period not exceeding 15 minutes.  I would like to remind members that petitions presented during a meeting of the special committee must already have been certified by the clerk of petitions.  In addition, to ensure that the petition is considered to have been properly presented, the certificate of the petition and each page of the petition for petitions certified in a previous Parliament should be emailed to the committee no later than 6 p.m. on the day before the committee. I thank all the members for their usual co-operation. Thank you all. Now we'll proceed to presenting petitions. Our first petition comes from the honourable member for Sherwood ParkFort Saskatchewan, Mr. Genuis.
Mr. Chair, I'm pleased to be presenting two petitions today. The first petition is with respect to government Bill C-7. Petitioners raised concerns that this bill removes safeguards from the current euthanasia regime. It includes removing the mandatory 10-day reflection period and the number of required witnesses who will witness a person's consent. The petitioners urge the House of Commons to immediately discontinue the removal of safeguards for people requesting euthanasia, and to put in place additional measures to protect vulnerable people. This would require that bill to be amended or not passed. The second petition is with respect to Senate public bill S-204. This is on organ harvesting and trafficking. Petitioners call on members of the House, and hopefully the Senate as well, to support Bill S-204, which would make it a criminal offence for a person to go abroad and receive an organ for which there has not been consent. It would also create provisions under which a person could be made inadmissible to Canada if they had been involved in organ harvesting or trafficking. Thank you very much.
Thank you. I want to remind all the members that there are specific headsets that have been mandated to all of us. If you don't have one, please talk to your IT ambassador and they will get one to you as quickly as possible. The reason for them is not so much for what you hear, but that our interpreters are working and there are work conditions that really make it difficult. Part of that is not having the appropriate boom on your headset, which will make it very difficult for them to hear and interpret for our members. Now we go to the member for BeachesEast York, Mr. Erskine-Smith.
Mr. Chair, I had to learn how to tie my tie all over again. It's been so long. I want to thank Jenna Robar, who's led this petition e-2453. The petitioners have noted that there are approximately 60 indigenous languages in Canada and that 2019, last year, was declared by the UN to be the year of indigenous languages. They draw attention to article 13 of the UNDRIP and to the TRC's calls to action numbers 13 to 16. Fundamentally, they call upon the Government of Canada to recognize indigenous languages as being official languages of Canada and to have each language recognized nationally, with implementations on regional and provincial levels, acknowledging that many regions have different languages.