Evidence of meeting #150 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 42nd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was pps.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
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....
NDP
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—
NDP
Liberal
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—
NDP
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.
Liberal
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.
Liberal
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.
Liberal
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.
Liberal
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.
Administration and Personnel Officer, Parliamentary Protective Service
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.
NDP
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.
Administration and Personnel Officer, Parliamentary Protective Service
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.
NDP
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.
Administration and Personnel Officer, Parliamentary Protective Service
We'll dig into that.
NDP
David Christopherson NDP Hamilton Centre, ON
Thank you, again, for getting it so quickly.
Thank you very much, Chair.
