Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Brassard, in addition, I think we should be taking this experience as the first step in a larger program of determining how we might want to build the capacity in our parliamentary system to allow for such things as virtual sittings to deal with circumstances that may arise u

Procedure and House Affairs committee  My guess is that it's roughly 1,000 employees. In normal circumstances, there are about 1,000 employees. There are 338 members, and in most instances they have more than one employee.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. Thank you. Mr. Brassard, as the Speaker explained, the resources that we have available to implement a virtual sitting, both for committees and now for the special committee on COVID-19, are fairly limited. When the Speaker replied to the government House leader as to how w

Procedure and House Affairs committee  My guess would be that we would be trying to coordinate this as much as possible with the whips, so that there is a comfortable coordination of the membership so as to satisfy their requirements, given the limitations that we will have in terms of how many. I think in this meeti

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Speaker. The Board of Internal Economy reiterated some of the prohibitions they instituted some time ago. Access to the building is now closed to the public, and there are no tours. Committee travel has been suspended, and international travel as well. Access to t

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Some technical staff and some procedural staff have to be there. There are some other support staff. We were in the neighbourhood of the upper fifties, in terms of personnel who were in place on the Hill to support the functions. One point I may add to what the Speaker pointed t

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I will point out that I was asked to take on another project, which I have happily done, to deal with the annotated Standing Orders. I think what we can do in that regard is to make it an evergreen document; that is to say, we would keep it up in a more active way so that when me

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The second edition, I think, came out some years ago. I was still in the House when the first edition came out in the mid-1980s. It's the standing order, an explanation of what we think it means, and a history of the standing order going back to 1867, if that's appropriate.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I've agreed to do it, yes, because that was the proposal. It seems to me it's the first cousin of the revised Standing Orders, so why not do it? It's a perfectly good project.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  When I appeared before the committee on April 9, I indicated that it was an initiative that I undertook in good faith to try to provide a better product for the members. At the same time, I indicated and acknowledged that I would not continue if there was any level of discomfort

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think the notion really is that any initiative that deals with the Standing Orders really belongs to the members. It was regarded as perhaps presumptuous on my part to become involved by initiating a project on my own initiative.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That was the objective that drove the project, yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'd have to do a survey to understand what has been done in other parliaments. The movement really began about 30 or 40 years ago in law. In England it was under Lord Rankin, who was a strong proponent of plain language simply because since everyone is subject to the law, they sh

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Personally, probably very little. This is an initiative that I'm able to direct. I think there was maybe one full time and then two others on the procedural side who were probably part time. Then I think the jurilinguists were brought in as the project advanced to a fairly substa