Mr. Young.
Evidence of meeting #43 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Evidence of meeting #43 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 40th Parliament, 3rd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was report.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
Thank you.
I'd like to ask Madam O'Brien a question. I forget what year you came to work at the House of Commons, so no offence intended, but what did they do before the Internet with such reports?
12:35 p.m.
Clerk of the House of Commons, House of Commons
Actually, I was musing just the other day on Micoms--
12:35 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
12:35 p.m.
Clerk of the House of Commons, House of Commons
--which were the size of helicopters and had giant hoods that came down.
We basically--
12:35 p.m.
Clerk of the House of Commons, House of Commons
That's right. It wasn't quite the Flintstones, but close.
Basically, we made a certain number of copies. A copy was delivered to members' offices. It was double-enveloped, so it was addressee-only, and somebody had to sign for it when it was delivered to the office.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
What would the cost be to revert to that for draft committee reports now? What would be the added administrative cost to your budget be?
12:35 p.m.
Clerk of the House of Commons, House of Commons
It wouldn't add anything sort of significant.
I should say that one of the committees, the committee on environment and sustainable development, used that approach when it was doing the study of oil sands and its effect on water, which was a very sensitive issue, obviously. What they did was watermark the copies and make the copies available each with an individual watermark. So that's always a possibility as well.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
Mr. Bard, I'm trying to understand. I haven't used the PINs because I never felt that I had that great a need for privacy and I didn't want to walk around asking my colleagues and thumbing in their PINs, so I don't use it. But my understanding was that this was the only secure way to communicate something that couldn't be requested by freedom of information. You're telling us now that it's the opposite: that it's the least secure. Can you tell me what kinds of devices—
12:35 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
What electronic device could be used? Is it picking up those signals out of the air? Is that what you're suggesting, that people could do that?
12:35 p.m.
Chief Information Officer, House of Commons
I can PIN to PIN with Mr. Mulcair and I'm just using the cellular systems, so I'm avoiding using the corporate network, the mail systems. There's no log, okay? Not only that--
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
But how do they pick it up? Does someone have a machine or device? A scanner...?
12:35 p.m.
Chief Information Officer, House of Commons
Yes, a scanner. It's the same kind of concern you have in using a cellular phone. When you call someone using your cellular, there are all kinds of devices to collect—
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Terence Young Conservative Oakville, ON
I thought they were scrambled. You mean voice calls aren't scrambled?
February 10th, 2011 / 12:35 p.m.
Chief Information Officer, House of Commons
There are some levels of encryption, but again, they're very, very minimal. Anybody who has some knowledge and good tools can unlock that.
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Joe Preston
Thank you.
Monsieur Paquette, nothing from you?
Mr. Mulcair, anything else?
Are there any questions from other members?
This has been very helpful, and Mr. Young's last question really falls on that: it's the most secure and the least secure, all in the same device. Thank you very much. I may never touch mine.
Thank you very much for being with us today. If you could supply to us what you've suggested on the varying levels.... But I think really what you've said to us today is that committees need to sit down and say, “How secure does this document have to be?” Then you would have a nice little shopping list of security levels that you could supply to the clerks and the chairs of the committees as we do it.
Many of the things, certainly, are in confidence. A steering committee document is still not...but how high a level of security? When we get to certain committees with more need for security, we'll have to ask for higher levels, so I would suggest that our great clerks will also have to be involved in knowing what's available to them. If you can supply us with that report, I think that would help us a lot in putting some remedies to the situation we have here today.
Thank you again for coming here today and helping us out.
I'm going to suspend for a couple of minutes and then we'll go in camera.
[Proceedings continue in camera]
