Mr. Poilievre, we have to watch the numbers too, though.
That's going to have to end it. I'm sorry, Julie, that we couldn't get to you. We have to let the officials go.
I will explain what we've been told by administration on the video conference, and they'll come on and answer questions.
To all the witnesses from Canada Revenue Agency, ESDC, and the Department of Finance, thank you very much for your work during these difficult times, the long hours and the brainstorming on what to do and how to make the system run. As I've said about government working at warp speed, we're not used to this in the government circles. Thank you very much for answering our questions today, and thank you very much for your efforts. We'll let you off the line so you can go about your business.
On the issue of video conferencing, which was adopted in the motion in the House, I reached out to officials from the House of Commons administration. Eric Janse, clerk assistant with the committees and legislative services directorate, and Stéphan Aubé, chief information officer of the House of Commons, provided me with the following update, and they'll come on after I read their statement:
Mr. Easter,
We wish to thank you and for sharing the Finance committee’s interest in the question of committee meeting by videoconference to hear witnesses, as allowed by the motion adopted by the House during the March 24th sitting. Even before the motion was adopted by the House, our teams began looking to see what options would be available in the event that such a solution would be required. Following the adoption of the motion two teams were setup, one to make sure teleconferences could be organized for this week and another to start the work to integrate a modern, easy to use videoconferencing solution that would meet the requirements of House of Commons committees could be put in place as soon as possible.
With regards to the committee’s interest in videoconferences for their meetings, we feel it is important to let the committee know that there are a number of important challenges that our teams are working through at this time. However, we are confident that we will be able to implement a first iteration solution very shortly, likely as early as next week, with our teams working throughout the weekend again this week to try and make that possible.
Members of the committee may want to know what our three greatest challenges are to make a videoconferencing solution available for your committee meetings, as well as those of the Health committee. First, it is to make sure that simultaneous interpretation is fully integrated into the solution to allow all Members to fully participate in the committee’s proceedings. It is also critical so that all Canadians can follow in the official language of their choice. This additional technical complexity is not something that many other parliaments or legislatures need to be concerned with, however, it is clear that without it the committee is not able to meet.
Our second greatest challenge, is to find a solution that integrates in to our infrastructure, thereby allowing us to broadcast the proceedings to the ourcommons.ca website, as stipulated by the motion adopted by the House. This is another element that is critical to ensuring that Canadians may follow the work of the committee.
Third, it is critically important to ensure that any solution we put in place does not overlook the importance of maintaining our network and infrastructure security.
Finally, in our testing we have learned that there will no doubt be other technical challenges that will come up from time-to-time. While we have not identified them all, we are working to mitigate those that we have encountered to this point. The importance of members working with the team from the House of Commons to help set up and test their connections, is critical to the success. We strongly encourage the use of headsets and ask that other suggestions on how to best connect to these meetings be considered by all participants. In addition, other factors beyond the control of the House of Commons may have an impact on how these meetings unfold. Internet connections slow down when many people using the same internet are streaming, internet connections fail and calls may be dropped, [no] matter what efforts have been done to avoid it. These things may even disrupt meetings and are not the types of things that are part of the usual challenges for a committee meeting on parliament hill. We will, however, continue to do our best to reduce risks, even if they can’t be fully eliminated. We will also continue to give our best advice to all Members on ways to ensure these meetings will be as successful as possible.
We trust that this helps the members of the committee understand that we are continuing to work diligently to address this desire and will provide an update to the Whips of all the parties early next week.
Thank you,
Eric Janse and Stéphan Aubé
I believe those two folks are available.
Mr. Aubé or Mr. Janse, do you have anything further to add before we go to questions?