Sir, I'll just go into the two organizations the committee was expecting to hear during the second hour of last Tuesday's meeting. The Caregiver Resource Centre, in the form of Terry Olayta, was to have appeared. Ms. Olayta was involved in a difficult case and did not check her e-mail, and having agreed to appear, she did not pick up the confirmation of appearance, so she never even embarked for Ottawa from Toronto. She asked what she might do to get her views before the committee. I told her she may not get a chance to appear and suggested she make a written submission.
In the case of the other organization, PINAY, Madam Calugay and Madam DeVeyra were staying at the Crowne Plaza Hotel that Tuesday, and while they were there, as I understand it from the front desk, there was a fire alarm and they wound up having to evacuate. I suspect this may have separated them from the materials they might have used to brief the committee.
More importantly, I followed that up with Ms. Chow's office, and they sent me a report that they'd been in touch and said they'd been barred from entry at some point. I then contacted the chief of security and asked him to have someone investigate. Watch Commander Bob Buss directed an investigation. It took them a while to get back to us because the constables who were on that morning were not back on duty for a couple of days. In this case, they found that the constables did remember them presenting themselves. The constables report they arrived between 11:30 and noon. They had no information about the committee they were to attend, the hour of the committee, nor had they a contact person. They verified the information--they have software to support security operations called Site-Secure--and they found they issued a pass to the pair at noon last Tuesday. So as far as security services can tell, they did not get on the Hill until well after the committee had adjourned.