Thank you.
This would be for both of you, Mr. Patrice and Dr. Raymond.
The committee is charged with looking at non-virtual alternatives. The other day we had Mr. Dufresne come in to testify on the legal and constitutional aspects of a virtual parliament. He referred specifically to section 16 of the Constitution and said that Ottawa is the seat of government and there's no legal impediment to holding meetings outside of Parliament—for example, there was the 1916 fire.
There are other venues within Ottawa. For example, the Canadian Tire Centre has 17,373 seats. The Shaw Centre is 365,000 square feet. TD Place, just down the road from Parliament Hill, has 10,575 seats.
As an alternative, if and when we do return to some sense of normalcy and there is still a requirement for physical distancing—and again, nobody's talking about 338 members coming back to Parliament—would or could those venues be alternatives that we can look at? For example, at the Shaw Centre, the diameter apart from each member of Parliament, assuming 338 members, would be 2,164 feet. The same would apply in the Canadian Tire Centre, with 80 sections of seats. Could those venues be used as an alternative to sitting in the actual chamber?
Mr. Patrice first, please.