Procedure and House Affairs Committee on April 30th, 2019

[David Graham, Liberal, Laurentides—Labelle, QC]

What does it cost? Is there a cost per copy?

[The Clerk of the Committee, Mr. Andrew Lauzon]

There will be a cost for the printed copies. I'll be able to give you a better estimate once I know how many copies the committee would like to have published in each of the....

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

What's a normal...? Can you give us a ballpark figure?

[The Clerk]

It's hard to say. Nowadays we pretty much do not print out paper copies of reports. We put them online and we send—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

We need a number.

Chair, we need a number.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Why don't we start with 100 in each language?

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

That sounds good.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Is that okay with the committee?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you.

[Chris Bittle, Liberal, St. Catharines, ON]

Are they for the Hill or are we sending them out? A hundred copies is great if it's going to the communities. A hundred copies in these different languages, I'm willing to—

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

They'll get out—or somebody is not doing their job and somebody here next time will make sure they get them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

The last thing I'll mention is that on the parallel chambers, we have some good research. We asked how many people normally show up. It is kind of fascinating because when we started this, we thought, “Well, there are two houses and we'll have two houses of commons that sit 338 people, so it's great to discuss this, whether we need two.” It turns out that the two chambers in Australia and Britain normally have between five and 20 people. You can look at that paper but it shows it's a totally different concept from what we were originally thinking of.

Also, in the British papers they talk about a committee of standards. I wanted to know what that was, so the researchers have also sent you something on how the committee of standards works in the British Westminster system.

[Geoff Regan, Liberal, Halifax West, NS]

I'd like clarification on something in relation to Mr. Christopherson.

He was referencing the VSS, which is not the vehicle screening facility. It's the video security system. It's important to note the distinction. I hadn't caught that beforehand.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Oh, that does make a big difference.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

There is one other thing that I will raise quickly. Next Thursday, when the minister is coming, the House is able to televise two committees, and four committees have asked. We can discuss that later.

We'll suspend until after the vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, Larry Bagnell]

Thank you, everyone, for coming back.

We'll start out by having PPS answer Mr. Christopherson's question.

[Supt Marie-Claude Côté]

Thank you.

I guess you had the question regarding the rentals and the utilities.

Mr. Graham will provide specifics on this question.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Great, thank you.

[Robert Graham]

On the three specific items, transportation and communication have increased from $100,000 to $350,000. Over the last little while we've increased the number of full-time equivalent employees. From a transportation perspective, there are a few more taxis going around. That's a minimal expense.

On the communication side, that's where we've recently launched a new website. That reflects the cost of developing that website which launched earlier this month.

For the rentals, that rental is an increase in the equipment related to major events like tents, fences and cinder blocks. It's not a new expense but an adjustment to reflect the reality now that we have some internal historical data. You'll notice, for instance, that there's a decrease in the acquisition of machinery and equipment by several million dollars. Some of that is simply being recoded to rentals.

Finally, for repair and maintenance, over the last year or two we've transferred a number of assets from the House of Commons to PPS, in particular, scanning equipment and that sort of thing. The costs of the maintenance of those pieces of security equipment have gone up because they are now our assets.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

I appreciate that. Thank you for doing that so quickly.

I have one follow-up. I don't know a lot about these things, but that seems to be an awful lot of money to develop a website.

[Robert Graham]

I don't have the exact breakdown of how much was used to develop the website versus an increase in transportation costs, but we can provide that.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Yes, I think I would like to have a little further detail, if you would, just because the jump is so significant. I really didn't hear a fulsome enough answer to satisfy my curiosity. If you could do some more follow-up on detail, I would appreciate that.

[Robert Graham]

We'll dig into that.

[David Christopherson, NDP, Hamilton Centre, ON]

Thank you, again, for getting it so quickly.

Thank you very much, Chair.