Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 4th, 2020

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

What is the price of that agreement?

[Stéphan Aubé]

Currently it is less than $10,000, sir.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Is it $10,000 for the year or $10,000 for the month?

[Stéphan Aubé]

The current contract that we have in place right now is on a monthly basis, sir. But we've established a contract to consume up to $10,000 right now—not a contract but a licensing agreement.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

So the agreement is for up to $10,000 per month. If you renew it, it's another 10 K.

[Stéphan Aubé]

Yes.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Software companies like to build in different features and add-ons for end-users. Was there any other expense in getting Zoom to its current state for us, outside of the $10,000 we've been paying every month?

[Stéphan Aubé]

We have not incurred any additional costs from the Zoom perspective. The costs have been related to modifying our infrastructure to integrate with any of the tools that we would have looked at, sir.

I'm just going to correct the $10,000 contract—

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

What are the other platforms?

[Stéphan Aubé]

We've looked at the existing portfolio of platforms that we have at the House of Commons, such as Skype for Business. We've looked at Microsoft Teams. We've also looked at Cisco Webex, sir. These are the platforms we assessed after we were requested to consider doing virtual meetings.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

When I was elected, I was honoured to take my seat as the member for Saskatoon—University. When I went through my computer training and got my Surface Pro and other devices, Zoom wasn't on there.

What has transpired that makes Zoom a better platform than Skype, which was preloaded onto my Surface Pro?

[Stéphan Aubé]

I will walk you through the process we took to select Zoom for this purpose.

As I just said, our first step was to evaluate our existing tools to make sure they did or did not meet the multiple requirements we have for committees. We quickly found out that the platforms we have right now could not meet some of the mandatory requirements to hold virtual meetings, such as built-in integration for simultaneous interpretation—your previous witnesses talked about that—as well as the ability to enable 338 people in a meeting if required, and also the ability to control the broadcast output in order for us to distribute to Canadians. Some of our existing tools didn't have these capabilities; hence, we needed to look at other products.

Beyond that, we did extensive market research, and we liaised with international and national security partners. We consulted over 30 parliaments, sir. We consulted leading research institutions and security partners. We also collaborated with existing parliaments using that platform.

Hence, in order to meet these requirements, we brought different tools into our lab and assessed them. One of the tools we brought in was Zoom. We discovered that Zoom met all of our requirements. It was easy to use in the context of what we needed to do. It supported all of the devices we offer to members, and it is as secure as the other solutions that we have in our environment right now, sir, to hold meetings that are open to the public.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

So it would not be fair to say this is a sole-source contract. Was there bidding, or were there proposals written by other providers? How did that roll out? I understand that you have evaluated all the ones that are out there, but did other providers provide a proposal for the tender?

[Stéphan Aubé]

For all the Microsoft products, sir, we have them on standing offers currently. We have them on contract, so we didn't need to purchase them.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Is there a point of order being raised by one of the members?

Mr. Gerretsen.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Madam Chair, I was going to wait until Mr. Tochor was finished. I didn't want to interrupt him.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Oh, okay. I wasn't sure whether it was a point of order. I'll get to you right after this, then.

You have about 30 more seconds, Mr. Tochor. I'm just letting you know that this is not cutting in.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

Who else was on the committee that made the recommendation for Zoom? It probably wasn't just you. Who were the other individuals that made the recommendation?

[Stéphan Aubé]

The members of my team, sir, who were engaged in the assessment of the different platforms made the recommendation to me to go ahead with this, too. I made the decision to move forward, recognizing the schedule and recognizing that I had the authority to purchase that tool for the consumption, as we are using it right now, sir.

[Corey Tochor, Conservative, Saskatoon—University, SK]

That's the end of my questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Thank you, Mr. Tochor.

Mr. Gerretsen.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

On a point of order, Madam Chair, Mr. Aubé was about to correct himself on some information but then he never got that out. I believe it was in reference to the $10,000 thing. Would it be appropriate to allow him to correct himself?

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Mr. Aubé, is that correct?

[Stéphan Aubé]

Yes. I wanted to correct that. It was actually for three months, the initial purchase, so it was $3,000 a month, which comes out to close to $10,000. I wanted to clarify that.

[The Chair, Liberal, Ruby Sahota]

Okay. Thank you. It's important to have that clarification on the record.

Next up we have Mr. Turnbull.