Evidence of meeting #27 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 vote.

A recording is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Stéphan Aubé  Chief Information Officer, Digital Services and Real Property, House of Commons
Clerk of the Committee  Mr. Justin Vaive
Charles Robert  Clerk of the House of Commons
André Gagnon  Deputy Clerk, Procedure, House of Commons
Andre Barnes  Committee Researcher

Noon

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Did it respect social distancing?

Noon

Clerk of the House of Commons

Charles Robert

Of course.

Noon

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Did it allow all members of Parliament to take part and represent their constituents?

Noon

Clerk of the House of Commons

Charles Robert

Yes, indeed.

Noon

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Did it allow for full participation by the media?

Noon

Clerk of the House of Commons

Noon

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Thank you so much.

Mr. Speaker, as we come to the fall, I don't think any of us know what to expect. It is a novel virus. It is a new virus. There is concern about a second wave, a second wave with influenza. How are you thinking about the health and safety aspects?

Noon

Liberal

Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON

Health and safety is number one with everything we do. We want to make sure that anyone coming to the Hill is not bringing contamination to the Hill or leaving with contamination, making sure that everyone is safe. This has been the case right from day one and we want to continue to make sure that we do it to the best of our ability, based on what is decided by the House.

Noon

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Thank you so much, Mr. Speaker.

Monsieur Aubé, I'm wondering if you could take us through what an ideal virtual voting system would look like from your perspective. In terms of all the security, what would your recommendations in your ideal system look like, please?

Noon

Chief Information Officer, Digital Services and Real Property, House of Commons

Stéphan Aubé

The first criteria that we've all been discussing is the security aspect. We want to make sure that, if we go forward with an electronic voting system, it is a secure system and we can validate that the results that are coming out of the system are the results based on the votes of the members of Parliament. For us, that is the first thing: it needs to be secure.

The second thing is that it needs to be easy to use for the members. We'd want to make sure that, with anything that we build, we would be able to engage the members to ensure that they can do this in an efficient way.

Noon

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Monsieur Aubé, may I interrupt briefly for a second?

I'd like to know very specifically what security steps you would recommend from the initial notification right through to the end of the vote, please.

Noon

Chief Information Officer, Digital Services and Real Property, House of Commons

Stéphan Aubé

More specifically, Ms. Duncan, we want to make sure that all these steps are logged, so when we notify someone, we'd log that someone did receive the message. Then when the person reads the message, the notification of votes, we would be aware that he received the notification.

We also want to make sure that we know when someone is logging into the system. We want to make sure that we know who's on it and whether it is the right person logging in.

We want to make sure that all transactions are encrypted, and encrypted in a way that ensures that no one can modify the results or influence the results through that encryption.

After that, we want to make sure it's signed. Through multiple factors of identification, we want the member to be able to sign the transaction to ensure that it is the member who made that transaction. We want to make sure that he used a House device with a House certificate, that he used his password, that he wasn't travelling from Toronto to Vancouver in the last 15 minutes, and that he did receive a confirmation. We want to ensure that the member, once he votes, will actually get a real-time confirmation of what he just did. He will also get a confirmation of his vote encrypted through different channels.

This is the way we want to ensure that it was the member who voted and to confirm that he voted. The last part of this is that we want to monitor all these activities while the votes are happening.

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Kirsty Duncan Liberal Etobicoke North, ON

Thank you, Mr. Aubé.

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Thank you. That was very helpful, actually, and very clear.

Next we have Madame Normandin, please, for two and a half minutes.

12:05 p.m.

Bloc

Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

Thank you very much.

Since Mr. Brassard touched on it, I'd also like to come back to the issue of standing committees. I attended a meeting of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration two weeks ago. Could someone confirm for me that the members of those committees had the option to attend remotely when the notice of meeting was sent out?

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

The Chair Liberal Ruby Sahota

Who's answering this question?

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON

I'm sorry. It's a good question, and we need to discuss what happened.

No, they didn't have that option. They had to attend in person.

12:05 p.m.

Bloc

Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

Perfect.

This may not have been brought to your attention, and I was wondering if you were aware that, given the physical distancing measures, there couldn't be more than a certain number of people there, which meant that the number of assistants was limited and that the witnesses—in this case, it was four senior officials and the Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship—could not be physically present in the room.

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON

Absolutely.

This needs to be considered when there are committees, and it's very important to have the option of being there virtually.

12:05 p.m.

Bloc

Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

Right.

I want to mention the case of my colleague Ms. Jenny Kwan, a member from British Columbia who is on the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration. While in the case of the Special Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic, she could attend meetings virtually, she had to travel to attend a meeting of the Standing Committee on Citizenship and Immigration that lasted two hours.

Is that statement accurate?

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON

I believe so, yes.

12:05 p.m.

Bloc

Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

Okay.

If we can, for instance, attend the Special Committee on the COVID-19 Pandemic virtually to ask questions in question period under some of our parliamentary privileges, but we have to vote or attend standing committees in person, doesn't that create some kind of hierarchy between the different parliamentary privileges?

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON

Not really.

It's the decision that must be made by parliamentarians and by this committee, based on what it finds possible to do in person and what it decides to do virtually. I don't think it's about hierarchy. It's a simple decision that needs to be made, and it's a decision for you as a committee and as members of Parliament.

12:05 p.m.

Bloc

Christine Normandin Bloc Saint-Jean, QC

If we decide that, on the one hand, members of standing committees must sit in person but, on the other hand, it is possible to vote remotely, is it correct to say that certain privileges will be more difficult to exercise than others, because it will be possible for parliamentarians to exercise them in a hybrid or virtual manner?

12:05 p.m.

Liberal

Anthony Rota Liberal Nipissing—Timiskaming, ON

Yes, it would certainly be reasonable to say that.

However, some elected members live a long way from Ottawa whereas others live here. We cannot say that those from far away have fewer privileges than those who are closer. It is up to each member to go to the designated place or to do what they have to do in order to exercise their rights.