[加拿大新聞] WHO balks at Ottawa’s request that key adviser testify before MPs

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WHO balks at Ottawa’s request that key adviser testify before MPs

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excerpt:

"The World Health Organization is balking at a Canadian parliamentary committee’s request for key WHO adviser Bruce Aylward to testify before MPs and explain the global body’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Matt Jeneroux, Conservative health critic and one of the vice-chairs of the House of Commons health committee, said he plans to seek support from other parties to take the request to the next level. He said he will propose the committee try to compel testimony from the Canadian epidemiologist by employing a rarely used power of summons...Don Davies, NDP health critic and another member of the committee, said he would support issuing a summons...House of Commons committees have the power to summon a person to appear as a witness, although that power is limited to individuals on Canadian soil. That means a summons could be served on them when they arrived in Canada. Dr. Aylward, who headed a WHO team to China’s Hubei province, the epicentre of the pandemic, was scheduled to testify before MPs two weeks ago but cancelled on short notice, citing an urgent matter related to COVID-19. MPs on the Commons health committee then sent a new invitation, asking him to testify by teleconference on April 29. The committee had already warned the WHO that it would be willing to summon him. However, Mr. Jeneroux said Sigrid Kranawetter, principal legal counsel at the World Health Organization, informed the committee that Dr. Aylward would not be appearing but that the committee could send written questions to the global body. On Wednesday, the WHO echoed this message. Asked whether Dr. Aylward would testify, the body indicated he would not...Canada has called for Taiwan to be granted observer status at the WHO – an urging that Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland repeated Wednesday. 'Canada believes Taiwan’s role as an observer in the WHO assembly meetings is in the interests of the international health community', she told the Commons."