Help Us Move Bill C-277 Forward

Bill C-277 – An Act to establish a national strategy on brain injuries has been passed by the Standing Committee on Health.

Bill C-277 aims to improve the health of people with living with brain injury by:

• Making sure all provinces and territories work together in the same way.
• Reducing differences in health care quality.
• Making it easier to get care and collecting standard data on how common brain injuries are and impact over the lifespan, so that policies and resources can be better directed to where they are needed most.
• Ensuring the Minister of Health is responsible for reporting on the details of the legislation every year.

What’s next

The government follows a process to ensure bills are researched, scrutinized and amended, therefore there a few stages it will now need to follow.

Committee Stage 

• The bill is referred to the Standing Committee on Health.
• The committee examines the bill in detail, holds hearings, and may invite witnesses.
• The committee may propose amendments to the bill. Amendments are debated and voted on by the committee members.
• The committee reports the bill back to the House of Commons with or without amendments.

Report Stage – This is where we are now.

• The House considers the committee’s report and any further amendments.
• MPs debate and vote on the committee’s amendments and any additional amendments proposed at this stage.

Third Reading

• There is a final debate on the bill in the House of Commons, considering its overall content and any amendments made at the Health Committee or during Report Stage in the House.
• A vote is then held on whether to pass the bill in its final form in the House. 

Senate

• The bill is sent to the Senate, and goes through similar stages (First Reading, Second Reading, Committee Stage, Report Stage, Third Reading). This step will be instrumental! We will need your help to amplify support for the bill when approaching this stage.
• The Senate may also amend the bill, in which case, a message gets sent back to the House of Commons for the consideration of MPs. Further debate can then potentially occur before its passage.

Royal Assent

• Following the bill’s completion of these stages, it is sent to the Governor General for royal assent.
• Once royal assent is given, the bill becomes law and is referred to as an Act of Parliament.
• The government then has one year to prepare a report setting out the strategy, and table the report before Parliament.
• Following this, the Minister of Health then must produce and table a report every five years, evaluating the effectiveness of the Strategy, offering conclusions and proposing possible recommendations to improve its effectiveness, to-date. 

If an election is called, all bills that have not been passed die on the order paper. This means they are removed from the agenda of Parliament and must be re-introduced in the new session of Parliament after an election. Unless an election is called early, Canada will have a federal election in October 2025.

Stay tuned for more information as the Bill progresses.