Procedure and House Affairs Committee on Sept. 28th, 2006

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Are you comfortable with that, Mr. Dewar? You have time left, if you wish.

You are finished. We will now go to Mr. Proulx.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Good day again, Ms. Johnson.

I just want to clarify something. I want to understand the 73% of registered voters. Can a voter register on election day in British Columbia?

[Linda Johnson]

Yes, they can.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

If they register on election day, are they counted in your figure of registered voters?

[Linda Johnson]

Yes, they are.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Therefore 73 is the total percentage of voters who were legally allowed to vote because they had registered either before or on the day of the election.

[Linda Johnson]

That's correct.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Do you have figures showing the percentage of eligible voters actually registered to vote? I'll explain my question. If you tell us that 25% of eligible voters actually register, then the 73% doesn't represent a very high rate of participation.

[Linda Johnson]

We had about 90% of eligible voters registered. What I will undertake to do is provide the clerk with statistics regarding participation by registered voters and participation based on the total number of eligible voters. We have both numbers available.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Looking around the table, I think the members of the committee have concluded their questions.

Ms. Johnson, on behalf of the committee, I want to thank you very much for coming out this morning. Obviously you are quite an expert in your field, and we thank you very much for the time you took to prepare for this morning's meeting. On behalf of the committee and the Government of Canada, thank you so much for your assistance in what we have to do with Bill C-16, and I wish you a great day.

[Linda Johnson]

Thank you so much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Members, we have now disconnected. We are no longer in a teleconference. The meeting is still in public.

I would like to announce that the video problems that we were having apparently were originating from the site in Victoria. There were no problems with this room. However, for our next teleconference we will not use that room again, so that should eliminate those problems. We will also move our room. The problems they were having had to do with camera. We will move into Centre Block so that they are not having camera problems and we're not having audio problems. Hopefully that will fix that problem, although frankly I was quite impressed with the technology that we used today, and the savings that we made on behalf of the taxpayers.

Having said that, we have concluded our business for today and would simply like to discuss future business and remind committee members of a few things.

On Tuesday, October 3, we have representatives of the following parties appearing before the committee: the Conservative Party, the Bloc, the New Democratic Party, the Green Party. Unfortunately, the Liberal Party cannot attend. On our behalf, I wonder if I could appeal to our members from the Liberal Party to see if they could have somebody attend, though the notice that we have is that the Liberal Party cannot attend. Any assistance that the members might give us would be helpful.

Thursday, October 5--

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Prince George—Peace River, BC]

I think they can if they get a tax receipt. I'm pretty sure that's the case.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

That's unnecessary.

Order, please.

On October 5 we are having a panel of academics, as you know, but we still have to finalize that list. Let me inform the members of where we are so far.

For Henry Milner, we're trying to arrange a video conference from Sweden. He can attend. We're attempting to do the video conference.

Louis Massicotte will be appearing in person.

For Andrew Heard, we're attempting to set up a video conference from Victoria, but not in that particular room.

Peter Hogg is not available.

We are still waiting to hear from Professor Sullivan.

The feeling is that if we can even get the three--Milner, Massicotte, and Heard--which it appears we can, they will be able to discuss in detail the issues with which the committee has concerns: conventions and statutories. It might be too late to ask anyone else, so I'm requesting that the committee agree that if all we can get is the three, that would be acceptable, and we should move forward with those three on that Thursday.

Yes, Mr. Reid?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I have some reservations about trying to line up more than one teleconference participant at a single conference. Without actually having examined the relevant time of day in Sweden versus Victoria--I'm going to guess it's about 12 hours difference--that's one consideration. The interaction might be very confusing.

I urge us to consider, if we can't get Professor Sullivan at a later date, trying to get her and one of the teleconference participants on one day, and the other teleconference participant on another day--or something like that. I have visions of a very confused meeting.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

Would you respond to that?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Ms. Lucile McGregor]

On the teleconferencing, I have been in touch with Professor Milner in Sweden, and he is the one who suggested doing it. He did it last year with the Quebec National Assembly. For Professor Milner it would be about 5 p.m. in Sweden; for Professor Heard it would be 8 a.m. in Victoria. Both are quite comfortable with the times.

On my understanding of the way the video conference works, it's one screen that goes on whoever is speaking at the time. So they're aware of that.

As the chairman mentioned, we're also going to be moving to the room in the Centre Block that has a fixed, permanent system. So hopefully the little camera glitches they had at their end will be solved, as well as the sound problems. But again, this is not something we do all the time.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I'm sure we'll have a better room in Victoria, but I'm just going to throw out a wild guess that our control over video conferencing in Sweden will be limited. We had problems here today, and when you have a problem with one participant, that person kind of goes on hold while you try to solve it. We could spend all our time dealing with that sort of thing.

I don't think you get twice as many problems; the problems start increasing exponentially when you have more than one conference at the same time.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

We could just do Victoria. We could also make it clear to the witnesses that if we end up having difficulties we will stop the participation of that witness and arrange another time. That way we will at least have the opportunity, if things go well, to get it all done in one meeting.

I'm opening it up to the committee for suggestions. The obvious thing is to have one video conference and one witness here, and then arrange for a different date for the other witness.

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

We could even have one in the first hour and one in the second hour. I really have my doubts about having both of them on screen at the same time. I figure we should maybe leave the technical experimentation to some other committee.

[Marcel Proulx, Liberal, Hull—Aylmer, QC]

Do you not trust our technicians?

[Scott Reid, Conservative, Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington, ON]

I just have reservations about the whole thing in general. I like a low-risk approach.

[The Chair, Conservative, Gary Goodyear]

That doesn't seem to be too unreasonable.

Mr. Owen.

[Stephen Owen, Liberal, Vancouver Quadra, BC]

On proceeding in this way, we wouldn't want that to close off the opportunity to call other witnesses if we still had gaps in our comfort.