There are a few things that may help. We just went across the country to do consultations with Canadians about what should be in the disability act. We used what's called CART services—captioning in real time—which allows people to read along with what's being done. It's up on a screen. They can do it from remote locations, and into remote locations. We used it while we were in Whitehorse and in Yellowknife, and in other places that have less access to those sorts of things.
The biggest thing is to work with parties to identify what supports are necessary. You may need to have different things, depending on who's coming. For instance, we don't always use CART services. We'll ask people to identify what their needs are ahead of time. You could take that approach. You put out a notice that there's going to be this meeting and if you want to attend you need to let us know ahead of time what your needs are. That way you're not spending money that's not going to be used.
We do. We end up spending money that, sometimes, because we wouldn't have an event without ASL and LSQ.... There may not be anybody who uses LSQ, which is a French sign language, but it's still there if somebody shows up. From our perspective, being a disability organization, we need that.
There are probably ways in which you could identify when these events are going to occur, and say that if someone needs support they need to let you know ahead of time. You're not necessarily having to do it every single time, but you could put some onus on people who want to come out that they need to let you know what their support needs are.
Then the other part is to make sure that's not included in the amount. The costs are not little. They can rise quickly. That's why we're suggesting that they not be a part of the general amount that parties are allowed to spend, but make it a provision that they can do those things and that won't go into the total of what they can spend.