Thank you. I appreciate that. That was the point I was trying to make, Madam Chair. I think members need to let me finish so they can see that it is, in fact, what I indicate it is. It's simply a matter of having these issues dealt with so we can consider the report in an appropriate fashion. I'll go through them.
The first point I was making, obviously, as I already indicated, was in regard to the outstanding request there was for documents to be produced by various witnesses. I'll just go through them so the clerk will have the list of what they were and we can maybe then see whether there are responses to that.
The first one was during the April 21 meeting. Of the Clerk of the House Charles Robert, Ms. Blaney had asked for an assessment of which MPs could have problems or concerns with Internet accessibility and whether that was something the clerk or House administration had a handle on.
On April 29, there were several. Of Mr. Moseley from Zoom, Mr. Gerretsen had asked for the minimum megabytes per second for Zoom to be able to work properly via the Internet. From the Translation Bureau, Ms. Blaney had asked Ms. ?Laliberté for the numbers of increased injury or fatigue incident reports. Of Mr. Moseley, Ms. Blaney had asked for the number of employees they have in Canada. Of Mr Moseley again, Mr. Duncan had asked for the status of the master services agreement with the House of Commons, and a copy of it. Again, of Mr. Moseley, Ms. Duncan had asked about their ability to authenticate votes. Of Mr. Weigelt from Microsoft, Ms. Duncan, again, had asked for cryptographic measures that would be recommended to protect the integrity of votes.
Then on April 30, there were a few requests of Mr. McCowan from the PCO. I had asked for the government's perspective or policy on the use of Zoom. Of Mr. McGill from the Scottish Parliament, Ms. Duncan had asked for the options being considered there for remote voting. Of Mr. Hamlyn of the U.K. House of Commons, Ms. Duncan had asked for remote voting testing arrangements and a follow-up on their testing results. Of Mr. McCowan of the PCO, Ms. Blaney had asked whether cabinet interpretation is provided by Translation Bureau employees or freelance contractors, and if by contractors whether they are certified.
Lastly, on the May 4 meeting, there were five requests. I requested from Ms. Gagnon from the International Association of Conference Interpreters whether there was a research paper or a study referred to in their brief and in their comments as “conclusive proof that the quality of sound...[teleconferences] provide never come close to the quality of sound needed for” remote simultaneous interpretation. On whether there was a study or a research paper that was referred to in that quote, she indicated there was and that she would provide it. Of Mr. Phillips of the Canadian Association of Professional Employees, both Mr. Turnbull and Ms. Blaney had asked for numbers concerning the interpreters' injuries.
Again of Mr. Phillips, Mr. Blaney had asked about ISO details associated with international standards for interpreters and video conferences and for a follow-up brief on when consecutive interpretation would be more appropriate than simultaneous interpretation. Lastly, of Mr. Patrice, the deputy clerk of administration, Mr. Brassard had asked for the number of employees required for virtual proceedings.
That was the first thing.
Secondly, I had asked if we could have our analyst provide research on provincial governments and their reopening plans, or the status currently of their legislatures as far as their sittings are concerned. He indicated he would provide it, so I know we'll receive it. I'm just wondering what the status of it is.
Thirdly, there were a number of witnesses who were proposed but not heard from, and I just wanted to get an indication as to what happened with those witnesses. I think some of them are quite significant. Particularly, there are four different groups of witnesses. The first one would be security witnesses. We didn't really get a lot of chance to discuss and sufficiently address this even though there seemed to be some concerns raised by me and a number of other members.
I think that in order to produce a proper report, we need to have some of those concerns addressed.
One of the security witnesses that was quite significant was the Communications Security Establishment and officials from there. We didn't hear from any of them. Other witnesses with regard to security that were requested, but not heard from, included Dick Fadden, the former national security adviser to Prime Minister Harper and the former director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, and Chris Vickery, a director for cyber risk research for UpGuard. Then there was the Canadian Institute for Cybersecurity at the University of New Brunswick and representatives from there.
Other groupings of witnesses who could be considered quite important that we didn't hear from include some of the former officials from the House of Commons. Audrey O'Brien was the former clerk, and many of us will remember her. She often provides very good advice. We did not hear from her, nor did we hear from the previous law clerk, Rob Walsh, or from another former clerk, Mr. Marleau, who has written a number of important books that we utilize in our day-to-day lives as parliamentarians. The advice there would have been good.
Then again, with regard to other jurisdictions, there were a number of other witnesses who were suggested. We did hear from a couple, but we didn't hear from any officials from the Australian Senate or the House of Representatives. We didn't hear from the New Zealand House of Representatives or from either the Senate or the House of Representatives in the United States. Obviously, those are often considered three of the close comparisons we make to our system. We also did not hear from Inter-Parliamentary Union officials.
There were also a few other witnesses that I would call “others”. One is Dale Smith, author of The Unbroken Machine: Canada's Democracy in Action. Another is Dr. Hannah White, deputy director of the Institute for Government. Then there's Dr. Kathy Brock, a professor at Queen's University.
Those are all people we didn't hear from who might have provided some very significant testimony. I wonder if we could get updates on all three of these items.