Evidence of meeting #84 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 debates.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
I have three quick questions.
Are the members of the 11-person board compensated?
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
They are not. Okay.
What's your overall yearly budget? Are you able to share that?
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Commission on Presidential Debates
I honestly don't have a number that would represent an accurate number once you take out all of the educational and other issues, but it's well under a million dollars.
12:55 p.m.
Liberal
Filomena Tassi Liberal Hamilton West—Ancaster—Dundas, ON
Okay.
How do you evaluate at the end, in terms of doing better and self-improvement and so on? Is there a mechanism...?
December 7th, 2017 / 12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Commission on Presidential Debates
Absolutely. We do studies on things ranging from production to.... As I said, there's a review of the candidate selection criteria. We talk to the debate venues and ask what happened that could be improved. We talk to law enforcement. We talk to the media. We talk to the moderators. We do a complete review of what happened, and after action reports to see where we can work on things to make them better the next time. We review formats after every cycle.
12:55 p.m.
NDP
Pierre-Luc Dusseault NDP Sherbrooke, QC
Could the debate, audio and video, be royalty-free, so that anyone could use it and broadcast it free of charge, in all or in part?
Is that a possibility?
12:55 p.m.
Executive Director, Commission on Presidential Debates
That is a question for the television networks, because the fact is the way we do this on a White House pool basis means that the signal that is transmitted, the actual broadcast, belongs to the White House pool. They are putting money into each debate in the form of the cameras, the cameramen, the production truck, and the transmission of the signal. That cost is shared by members of the pool, so it is entirely their decision as to whether they would waive even a nominal fee and say that it could be made available to anybody with no charge. Needless to say, social media companies have been pushing for some time to say that they are owed that, but that is a decision for the members of the White House television pool to make.
1 p.m.
Liberal
1 p.m.
Executive Director, Commission on Presidential Debates
We have triple redundancy on every element that goes into the debate hall.
I don't know if any of you saw the 1976 debate between Mr. Ford and Mr. Carter in Philadelphia or have seen video of it. The power failed, and there was a 27-minute silence on the stage. I needn't tell any of you how excruciating that would be, if you were in a debate of that level of magnitude, to be standing there for 27 minutes wondering what exactly had happened.
I had to laugh. Two Super Bowls ago when there was a power failure in New Orleans and a large part of the stadium went dark, I said to my husband, “I give it 45 seconds.” He said, “Forty-five seconds to what?” I said, “Until my engineer emails me and says 'not on our watch, it wouldn't have happened'”. It was about 30 seconds.
1 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
1 p.m.
Executive Director, Commission on Presidential Debates
The answer is absolutely, you have backup systems on backup systems.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
It sounds like you're a very efficient administrator. Thank you very much for appearing today. It's been very helpful for us. I think it will be a big part of our deliberations.
1 p.m.
Executive Director, Commission on Presidential Debates
Thank you. It's a privilege.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
To the committee, for our meeting next Tuesday, December 12, which is our last scheduled meeting for this year, we have Twitter and La Presse currently scheduled. We're waiting to hear back from TVA and the Huffington Post. In the second hour, we will be giving drafting instructions to our analysts.
There's another thing for people to think about, not right now but over Christmas if you want to. After our 18 votes the other night, if you want to revisit the discussion we had on electronic voting when we were discussing the Standing Orders—
1 p.m.
An hon. member
Applied voting.
1 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Larry Bagnell
—or applied voting, keep that in your Christmas package.
Is there anything else for the good of the nation? Okay.
Tuesday will be our last meeting. Is everyone agreed? We'll give instructions and come back....
Also, Trinidad and Tobago couldn't be reached for today, but we're going to try to get them to the first or second meeting when we come back.
1 p.m.
Voices
Oh, oh!
