Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, frankly, Mr. Chair, through you to Mr. Andrews, there's no reason why you shouldn't be allowed to do that. It's just that the question has never come up. Even on the monitoring, as Mr. Andrews puts it, of e-mails, the idea is that the e-mail addresses are assigned to the various assistants in the office and then that's managed by the member.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We'd be happy to provide that kind of written report to the committee. Yes, we could do that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If I may, Mr. Chairman, with regard to the question of being able to track, which I take it is what Mr. Andrews is particularly interested in, the kinds of logs we keep and so forth really are done...again, coming back to this business application support, it's a question of recovering for people who've lost things and want a record of them.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'll hold my tongue. You know how I can ramble on.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I just have a few brief comments to make and then we can get straight into questions, if that's okay.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. We're very pleased to be here today to be able to answer the questions of the committee relating to this very important issue. I don't have an actual formal opening statement, but I simply do want to emphasize that the environment that we are working in, from the point of view of technology, is basically a business application environment.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, I could send the list of messages to the committee and let it know how the clerk of the committee proceeded for the distribution of the draft report.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's my understanding.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, Mr. Chairman, if I may just pick up on what Mr. Lukiwski was suggesting earlier, one of the things we've been doing over the course of this Parliament is gathering information about the restructuring of the orientation for new members and for new staff in the next Parliament.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, perhaps I could just say something before Monsieur Bard goes into the more technical aspect, if he has anything to suggest. He certainly, as the CIO, and I are extremely preoccupied at all times with security and we have a lot of discussions about technological security, especially given the proliferation of devices, and so forth.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  And I'm ubiquitous. Mr. Chairman, I was very pleased to see that in the course of the discussion with the Law Clerk and Parliamentary Counsel the whole relationship between the administration of the House and individual members was very nicely exposed. That is to say, we regard each member of Parliament as an individual client and that the relationship of trust that we build up with the individual members and with the individual parties is one we absolutely rely on.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Someone appeared before the Standing Committee on Public Accounts and testified, and their sincerity was in doubt. I can give the committee the details of the precedent in question.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, I believe that—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The problem is that there isn't enough work to hire all those people on a full-time basis. We know there isn't enough work; consequently, they are there on a part-time basis. Unfortunately, when decisions are made such as the decision to prorogue, that no one has seen coming, those people suffer as a result.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We're reviewing the options. I believe we've pretty much looked at all aspects of the matter, that we've tried to determine whether these people can be deployed elsewhere to do something else. It's very difficult. For example, the people who work in restaurant services are quite specialized.