Evidence of meeting #61 for Status of Women in the 42nd Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was reasons.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
We will try to bring this back to the House as soon as we can, tomorrow if possible, otherwise Monday.
Ms. Damoff.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
Do you need a motion now for us to send a letter to the provinces?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
I don't require a motion. We've given instruction to the clerk. If you want to make a motion, it's fine.
Liberal
Pam Damoff Liberal Oakville North—Burlington, ON
No. That's fine. As long as she has it, that's fine. Who moved that originally then?
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
It was originally Sean who moved it and all were agreed so far, but I'll call it as a motion just so it's official.
The motion is to write to our provincial bodies to recommend online access for these written decisions.
Liberal
Karen Ludwig Liberal New Brunswick Southwest, NB
Online, but as well it should be searchable so that someone's not getting a large transcript and having to read through it. They can actually search it, for example, for keywords.
Conservative
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
I find it a little strange for a parliamentary committee to write to provincial ministers. Is there consideration instead of us asking our justice minister to reach out to her provincial counterparts? That seems more ordinary and also probably more effective.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
I'm open to suggestion. We did send the copies of the “Taking Action to End Violence Against Young Women and Girls” report broadly throughout the province. We communicated directly that way.
Liberal
Sean Fraser Liberal Central Nova, NS
I think it's a good idea. I think as well perhaps what we can do is task the clerk with preparing a draft for our consideration, and we can think of who might be the recipients of this letter and the feedback that it should include. We can deal with it during committee business at our next meeting, or even potentially at the subcommittee.
I think we're roughly on the same page, but if we want to go through our own justice minister, I have no issue with that. However, I think we can probably sort out the details of this letter at the subcommittee or during another meeting.
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
Right. I'm going to ask the clerk to bring a draft for our consideration at the next committee business. At the next committee business, we will craft the motion exactly as we would like to have it be. Then we will execute as such.
NDP
Sheila Malcolmson NDP Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC
I have two points. One is that the committee distributing a report that it has sent to Parliament is one thing, but in this case we're actually taking on an advocacy area so that's where I think minister to minister is most effective.
I also want to make sure that we are going to capture the consensus I heard around the table that we've identified a need for sexual assault and trauma-informed training throughout the entire justice system, not only for judges. If this remains the will of the committee, then maybe one letter could identify the publishing online of judicial reasons but also the training for other members of the justice system in one letter intended to change provincial policy.
Conservative
Conservative
The Chair Conservative Marilyn Gladu
Very good.
We have some additional time, so while I have your attention, I want to tell you some exciting things that have been shared from the LIAI committee about upgrades to committee business in terms of social media.
In addition to the Library of Parliament providing reports, instead of the usual black reports that have the seal at the top that are incredibly visually stimulating, it will be able to put up to three pictures and a colour band on our reports, so that is quite exciting.
The Library of Parliament will also be introducing Twitter announcements for committees. It will tweet out when committees are meeting. It will tweet out when there is a press release, and it will tweet out when there is a call for submissions. We are able to ask the Library to tweet anything else out, and we may retweet and they will use #FEWO as the tracker for that, so you will see that rolled out.
The other thing that's new is that the parliamentary website is going to be updated. It will have a much better visual display and accessibility will be very good. I don't know if you've had some difficulty trying to find things on the committee web pages, but the Library has made it friendlier and searchable. I saw those updates yesterday, and the Library will send us a presentation that I will send along to you, but I wanted you to be aware that the Library is thinking about moving into the next century.
I've also told the Library that seven million people use Twitter and 22 million Canadians use Facebook, so I've encouraged the Library to get on Facebook, and move our committees in that direction as well.
Thank you to our wonderful committee today for your co-operation. We've achieved an outcome here that was a recommendation from our report “Taking Action To End Violence Against Young Women and Girls in Canada”, and it is a good outcome.
The meeting is adjourned.
