Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll be very quick, because I know we have witnesses.
Similar to what occurred at another meeting, I am bringing up, very quickly, that we received a letter from the CNIB. Ms. Rabaa's letter highlighted the committee's concerns about barriers to accessibility being created at the committee. Ms. Rabaa wrote that, during her audio test, staff informed her that “there were no issues with the quality of the device being used.” Of course, the perspectives of Canadians who are blind or deaf-blind, or who have low vision, should not be rendered inaccessible at any committee.
I'm hoping we can quickly have consent among members to remedy this issue by asking that the chair apologize to Ms. Rabaa on behalf of the committee for the barrier to access and provide an explanation to Ms. Rabaa as to why her audio test was deemed successful but she was then not allowed to participate. Can we invite Ms. Rabaa to reappear at the committee for one hour? We can easily accommodate this. The committee agreed last week to leave the study open, pending the appearance of the minister for an hour. Therefore, the study is still open and we can easily have an additional hour scheduled for Ms. Rabaa.
One suggestion could be, so that it doesn't take away from other committee business.... We have other times in the future when we'll be looking at drafting instructions. Maybe we can tighten that meeting up or even ask for written submissions, because drafting instructions.... It's really just getting feedback from committee members about how we want the analysts to write the report. That might be a way of adding in that extra hour very easily.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.