Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm sure if I talked to the CIO, there would be a dizzying array of technological solutions. Somebody yesterday was telling me about a spy store that existed on Bronson Avenue, but we won't get that into that. What we try to do is make everything as accessible and as open as possible, so that members have real liberty of action, and it's up to them to decide how to proceed.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm the wrong person to ask.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, it's not just birds.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We'll be following on Twitter to find out.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Chairman, let me just comment, through you, on Mr. Lukiwski's comments. One way the committee might want to consider proceeding is to come up with a recommendation that is generally phrased concerning the appropriate use of electronic devices, with the idea that you would return to it if and when particular problems were to manifest themselves.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, you were in committee of the whole. You are correct. Camera use is also restricted in committee. You are right, members were not assembled as the House, but rather as a committee of the whole.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  However, once the work gets underway...

Procedure and House Affairs committee  From the point of view of someone who worked on the second edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, I don't think the new technology poses singular difficulties. It's obviously something where things work faster and further afield, and so forth, but I don't think it interferes with the basis of the principles that are in place.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No. I do think, for example, though, the whole business of the use of the BlackBerry in committees, just in terms of the courtesies that are extended to other colleagues and to witnesses, is something that is being worked out in all kinds of forums. People are finding that they're having meetings and the forum itself is just not being given the attention it deserves.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There was no rule against it. They could have been taking notes and eventually putting it in their newspaper. There has never been any rule against that. There are instances where there are people who are live blogging from various events, and that doesn't appear to have posed a problem.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's the thing, and of course we would have no control over that either.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I know we're looking at the whole question of file sharing with constituency offices. One of the things we have to be extremely careful about is the whole question of security. We've had instances of cyber attacks that have been quite serious, and we've been able to withstand that by virtue of the threshold of security that we insist on maintaining.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If the cameras were removed?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I wouldn't venture a guess.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think Mr. Speaker summed it up well when he murmured to me just now, “What cameras?” I think we've crossed over a border. We now find that cameras are really ubiquitous, because anybody who has a smart phone has a camera. That wasn't the case before, so it was much more intrusive, if you will, than it is now, but I think a certain common sense prevails.