I call this meeting to order.
Welcome to meeting number 12 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs.
I'd like to start the meeting by providing some information following the motion that was adopted by the House on Wednesday, September 23. The committee is now sitting in a hybrid format, meaning that members can participate either virtually by video conference or appear in person. All members, regardless of their method of participation, will be counted for the purposes of quorum.
Witnesses must always appear virtually. Today, we do have the House administration in who are physically present. Thank you.
The committee's power is limited to sittings by the priority use of House of Commons resources, as determined by the whips. Any questions must be decided by recorded vote. Just to let you all know, today we will be voting on the main estimates and the supplementary estimates.
The committee can deliberate in camera, provided it takes into account the potential risks to confidentiality inherent in such deliberations with remote participants.
Today's proceedings are going to be made available via the House of Commons website.
As a reminder to everyone—although I think everyone here is probably an expert at this now—the entirety of the committee will not be shown on the website, only the member who is currently speaking. I think it's good to have that in mind.
You can use any of the choices of “floor”, “English” or “French” on your screen, for those who are participating virtually.
Hopefully will it continue to work, through some innovation, that we no longer have to switch those choices on the screen when we're switching the languages we're speaking. That is fantastic because it definitely held things up in the past.
Remember to speak slowly and clearly and also to wear your headset. It has been very difficult on the interpreters, so let's be mindful of that. It's mandatory to wear the headset, so please let me know if there's some kind of problem and you can't receive a headset. I just heard there was an issue. We'll try to help as best as possible to facilitate, if any issues arise where you can't get access to a headset with a boom mike.
Wait until you're called upon by me to begin speaking. Unmute your own mike and then you're going to have to mute your own mike; it's not done automatically. Please remember to do that. If there are any points of order, just unmute your mike and state that you have a point of order.
If anyone wants to speak to that point of order, then please use the “raise hand” function at the bottom of your screen.
Today is meeting number 12, Tuesday, November 24, and we're going to be meeting from 11:00 to 1:30. We're going to have two panels.
On the first panel we have appearing before us, we have the Speaker of the House, the Honourable Anthony Rota, and of course the Clerk of the House, Mr. Robert. Thank you for being with us again.
We also have Monsieur Patrice and Mr. Paquette, as well as Parliamentary Protective Service within this panel.
Welcome to the director of Parliamentary Protective Service.
There are quite a few participants in this meeting. Just to let you know, there are other House of Commons administrative staff here in case there are some questions that the Speaker or Monsieur Robert cannot answer—although I find it hard to believe that there would be many questions where you or Mr. Leahy or Mr. Patrice would not be able to answer. There are others to supplement and help out, so we get the most fulsome answers possible.
In case anybody doesn't know, Mr. Paquette is the chief financial officer, because we're dealing with the estimates.
We will start with the Speaker.
Mr. Speaker, may we have your opening remarks.