Evidence of meeting #17 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 43rd Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was recommendation.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Yes, this is with the changes proposed by the analyst.
Do we agree on the amended NDP 6?
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
I suggest that this would allow us to strike BQ 4. Is that correct? It talks about the same topic.
Liberal
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Okay, so we'll strike BQ 4 and LIB 15.
Now we're looking at LIB 16, the recommendation regarding injuries and fatigue. This was mentioned in our meeting and in the recommendations we received.
Is everyone okay with adopting LIB 16?
Mr. Richards.
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
I have a question, more so than a comment, on this recommendation.
It obviously lists some pretty specific items. I generally tend to say that it might be better to stay away from doing this, but I don't know where they came from. When drafting these recommendations, was the House administration or the translation bureau consulted? Where did these very specific criteria come from?
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
These came directly out of the recommendations that were provided by the conference interpreters association. I keep saying the name wrong, so my apologies, but I think you know what I'm referring to.
Liberal
Liberal
Ryan Turnbull Liberal Whitby, ON
The recommendations are directly from them. For example, the compressor limiters are specifically to prevent acoustic shock. These were very specific recommendations they made for their health and safety. We tried to adopt those almost completely, with no changes.
Bloc
Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC
In the translation, under the third point, it says “le gros de l'interprétation”, which is a bit informal. I would like it to be changed to “la majorité de l'interprétation”.
Thank you.
Conservative
Eric Duncan Conservative Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON
Thank you, Madam Chair.
The second bullet point says, “Do a sound check with coordinator and technician before each meeting begins.” This is great for our committee and is no problem, but I think for a virtual Parliament, when 200 or 300 of us come on and there are dozens of speakers, I don't want the poor testing team to think they're going to have to do 200 sound checks, twice a week. I understand where that comes from, but we may want to be a little more specific, with “where possible” or something, just to not burn them out.
Conservative
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
Mr. Richards, I'm sorry. I started thinking about Mr. Duncan's suggestion, and....
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
The reason I interjected is that I have a similar concern from a different perspective, so maybe we can come up with something after. My perspective on this one is the same concern. When we have House proceedings, it is very different from committee proceedings. In fact, I can even see this being an issue with committee proceedings. For example, today we had some members who have come and gone and new members have been introduced, so how do they do a sound check before the meeting starts? They wouldn't be able to. We don't want to suspend the meeting to allow for a sound check.
It becomes worse with the House proceedings. During question period, or whatever we're calling it right now, sometimes a member might not have a question that day, or it could be a member of the government who is not tasked with answering, but then suddenly a point of order arises that they want to raise. They haven't been sound-checked ahead of time, because maybe they didn't join the meeting at the beginning, and the same thing goes there. They might have another meeting they're participating in. They jump into the middle of that, something comes up, and they want to do a point of order. Are they now prevented from being able to do that because they weren't sound-checked ahead of the meeting?
I'm not trying to make this difficult, but maybe we need to change that a bit.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota
I think a comment was just made that we do sound checks when possible, or....
Conservative
Blake Richards Conservative Banff—Airdrie, AB
Perhaps saying “where possible” would at least not put us in the territory where we would possibly be infringing upon the members' rights and privileges. “Where possible” would at least give some wiggle room on that. It might work. I don't have a better suggestion, but I think it is something we have to resolve, because it could lead to problems.
