Proceedings of the Standing Committee on
Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament
Issue 14 - Evidence, October 6, 2009
OTTAWA, Tuesday, October 6, 2009
The Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures and the Rights of Parliament met this day at 9:34 a.m. to consider that the Senate approve in principle the installation of equipment necessary to the broadcast quality audio-visual recording of its proceedings and other approved events in the Senate Chamber and in no fewer than four rooms ordinarily used for meetings by committees of the Senate.
Senator Donald H. Oliver (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, I welcome everyone. The Standing Committee on Rules, Procedures, and the Rights of Parliament today begins its study in respect of a reference from the Senate Chamber of June 17, 2009, on broadcasting of Senate proceedings.
My honourable colleagues who were members of this committee during the last Parliament will recall that the committee had received a similar reference from the Senate during the First Session of the Thirty-ninth Parliament. While the committee had started its study on the matter, it had yet to report to the Senate when the session was prorogued. A synopsis of the proceedings of the committee during the First Session of the Thirty-ninth Parliament was prepared by our analysts and was sent out to all members yesterday.
[Translation]
Pursuant to an order of reference from the Senate, the committee will study issues that include the installation of equipment in the Senate chamber, the addition of meeting rooms equipped for broadcasting, the use of a producer, the development of policies and guidelines by the Standing Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration, and the availability of debates and proceedings on Parliament's Web site.
Without further delay, I will give the floor to our witnesses, Senator Segal, who is responsible for this order of reference, and Senator Banks.
[English]
Senators, you now have the floor, and after you make your presentations, honourable senators will have questions they would like to put to you.
[Translation]
The Honourable Hugh Segal, Senator, Senate of Canada: Thank you, Mr. Chair. Fellow senators, I am grateful for this opportunity today to explain the rationale behind the motion to allow the public real-time access to our proceedings in the Senate chamber, as well as the intended effects of doing so.
[English]
As some here will know, I moved this motion in its original form on April 6, 2006, during my first naive year here as a member of the chamber. My purpose was simple: I had been and remain impressed by the broadcasts available of the House of Lords in the U.K., the body upon which we were modelled by the Fathers of Confederation, and I believed then, as I do now, that the public has the right to access our deliberations in the chamber and that our deliberations in the chamber would improve with public access.
In making my case to a rather skeptical Senate, I was moved then and I am moved now by the simple reality that the right to know and the right to see our deliberations, not only in committee but also in the chamber for routine proceedings, votes, committees of the whole and the rest, should be advanced by this institution for the taxpayers and citizens who finance our activities and whom we all seek to serve as best we can. I cannot tell you how this audio-visual real-time access would affect the legitimacy issues always present when a third of our legislators at the federal level are not elected, but that is probably not predictable. However, denying that access in this day and age cannot but hinder the balance and fairness of that access.
I appeal to you to consider this motion positively and with some sense of urgency. You may in your wisdom seek its amendment or improvement, which is what committees do, one of the great strengths of this institution. I am utterly open-minded in that respect and will be glad to work with you in every reasonable way as long as the principle of real- time access is in meaningful measure preserved.
[Translation]
The first time I moved the motion, I was focused solely on conventional television. Our committee proceedings are now broadcast by CPAC. I got the lowdown, so to speak, and the idea took considerable shape thanks to my colleague in the other party, Senator Banks, who will also be appearing today when the Chair asks him to do so. I will just say that the motion before you has my unconditional support and is more realistic in its scope than my initial motion.
I also want to point out that colleagues who have spoken on the motion took into account the broadcasting of a digital video signal or on-line access, rather than conventional or cable broadcasting. I am not at all opposed to these modes of transmission.
[English]
Thank you for allowing me to review our proposal before you this morning.
Hon. Tommy Banks, Senator, Senate of Canada: Thank you for inviting us to appear before you this morning. As Senator Segal has said many times when discussing his motion, the object is to bring light into the proceedings of the Senate, wherever they might be. That is obviously a laudable intent.
The proceedings of the Senate about which we are speaking — that is to say, the things that go on in the chamber and in committee meetings — are all available word-for-word publicly now. They are available in print form now, if one has the stick-to-it-iveness to go and find them and if one can put up with the delay it takes sometimes to get them up in their various places on the Internet.
We are not talking about making anything available to the public that is not now available to the public. We are talking about the means by which it will be made available to the public, the ease with which it will be made available and the advantage to the public of seeing as well as hearing what is being said by senators in this place. That, I suggest, is a laudable objective, which, as Senator Segal has said, might not guarantee a different view of the work of the Senate by Canadians but could not hinder it. We are talking about moving the accessibility of what the Senate does and the record of what the Senate does and senators say and do into the 21st century.
If I may, Mr. Chair, I would like to work backwards and give you an idea of how we perceive this would work. If this committee were to recommend the motion and if the Senate were to pass it, and if Internal Economy were, as is set out in the motion, to proceed with these arrangements, in about three years from now, which is I think about how long it would take, a person sitting in Pouce Coupe or Burlington today could go to their computer and not very long after that to their television set, call up the Senate channel, or whatever it would be called, on which there would be a menu, and they would be able to select, let us say Bill C-6, in which there happens to be a lot of interest at the moment. They would be able to hit a button and see everything that has been done and said in this place from the moment the bill was introduced at first reading, the debates at second reading, the reference to committee, the committee debates, the committee recommendation, the referral back to the Senate, debate at third reading, and the vote on the bill, or on a study that is being undertaken by a committee, in consecutive order and in its entirety. The ease with which this can be done would ensure that, for example, this meeting would, in that system, be up and available for people to see probably this afternoon but certainly no later than tomorrow morning, because, as Senator Duffy will tell you, the process of doing this digitally now simply consists in the editor — it is an editor — determining when the gavel was pounded; scroll down; when did the gavel come down to end the debate on that subject; snip-snip; push a button; boom, it is there. That would mean that, as Senator Segal has said, on an almost instantaneous real-time basis, Canadians will be able to see what the Senate is doing on a subject basis rather than wading through all the process they have to right now.
With all respect to the way Hansard is set up, right now it is difficult for the average person to find what they want to talk about. If they are looking for the debate on a given bill, weeks may go by before something is said about it, certainly days, and putting it all together in one place so that someone can find out the progress of a bill in the chamber is extremely difficult. This would make it extremely easy and it would all be there, and every word that is said would be there. There would be no selectivity in this. It would be a neat little package. This is doable.
Where would it occur? It could occur tomorrow afternoon, if the system were ready, in a sort of YouTube-like format on people's computers on a dedicated Senate-like channel. Very soon we would be able to obtain, I believe — and I have discussed it with some people — a dedicated cable channel for the Senate. The capacity of that channel to respond instantly to interactive commands, to find subjects, to go forward, to go back — for instance, "What did she say? I would like to hear it again" — is almost in place and probably would be by the time this system is up and running. You all know that in some markets that is doable now — with movies, for example. You call up a site on your television set, select from a large menu of movies, and start, stop, go back and go forward any time you want. That is the process we are talking about.
It would cost money to do this. It would probably cost a lot of money to do this. It would cost money that would have, in the end, in the aggregate, six zeros on the end of it, but it is worth it, senators, in order that Canadians — who now, I am sure you all know, have very little idea of what we actually do here, what goes on here and how we do it — would be better informed about the operation of this house of Parliament.
The Chair: Thank you both very much. Senator Segal, you used the phrase "real-time access." When we finish government business and start going through the Orders of the Day, people stand up and say "stand" and make statements about when they would like to speak and so on, and we do that for 15 or 20 minutes. Have you given any thought as to whether it should be direct real-time access of every single thing that goes on, or do you envisage some kind of editing?
Second, if we were to have three hours of tributes to a departing senator, is that the kind of thing that you think shows the Senate in a great light that you would like to have Canadians from Newfoundland to Victoria see at the push of a button?
Senator Segal: Senator Fraser and Senator Andreychuk expressed concern about the notion of editing, not in the constructive intellectual sense of deciding what should be in a good newspaper — the end of that intermediary function is probably the end of civilization — but the notion that somehow the staff to which Senator Banks has referenced would pick and choose, which goes against the principle of real access. On the menu, there would be Orders of the Day, and if people are desperate to watch Orders of the Day or tributes to a retiring senator or a deceased public servant, they should have a right to see it. Most people who would initially be attracted to this would probably not be the general public but researchers, academics and students, and all the people who do access-to-information work, which is part of our free society, and then I would think it would grow. However, I would not be in favour of any primordial decision as to what the people get to see. I would let them decide in the fashion that Senator Banks has referenced.
Senator Banks: Yes. The word "editing" as we use it and think of it has not got anything to do with cutting anything out. If we are to do this, if you recommend doing this and if the Senate decides to do it, then no word that is said by any senator in any place that is not in camera ought ever to be excluded from the system.
The Chair: Senator, you used a figure with six zeros. I presume you have talked to the administration. Does this mean there might have to be some structural changes to the chamber, apart from bringing in cameras and sound and other equipment, to make this work? In other words, what does this six-zero figure cover?
Senator Banks: First, it would be the acquisition of equipment. As we have now seen, the equipment is available in forms that do not intrude in any way upon the business of the Senate. We know if we put permanent camera positions into the chamber, the business of having structures with cameras on them when events are televised in the chamber would go away. We would not need that because of the remote capabilities now and the miniaturization of all of these. The same thing is true of what I will call "editing," but it is not editing in the sense of removing anything — the assembly function. The equipment that used to be required to do that would have filled this room. The equipment that is now required to do that would fill a much smaller space.
Structurally, there would need to be a room in which this process would go on that would accommodate three people at a panel of instruments. It is all done digitally now. Nothing goes around anymore. There is no record, no tape. Nothing moves. It is a black box.
It is the acquisition of that equipment and the engaging of the people to do this, who must be expert. I assume they would be permanently engaged if the Senate were to decide to do this on an ongoing basis.
I suspect the Internal Economy Committee would want to make decisions along the line of how far back would the archive go, how long would this stuff be kept, and how much of it would be currently available on television or at the push of a button. I assume they would consider things like maybe limiting it to the current session of Parliament while everything else would go into a retrievable archive somewhere. Those concepts would need to be addressed when more detail is in place.
Structurally, it would not be a factor, other than providing that room somewhere — and, by the way, it could be in North York; it does not have to be here, although it would probably be a good idea to have it in Ottawa.
The Chair: Have the two of you looked at what they do in the United States and in the United Kingdom with respect to television? How does your proposal compare to that?
Senator Segal: My research related to the House of Lords because I saw that as more relevant. A House of Lords broadcast is available on the BBC on a daily basis; it summarizes all the questions and the answers that were given in the house on that day. That was a result of negotiation between the parties in the house.
My presumption would be that, in the same way as our colleagues on the other side came to a decision with the Speaker about rules such as where the camera focuses, where it does not focus when someone else is speaking, and so on, there would also be a process that this committee or some other committee of the Senate would have to sort through to ensure there was some modest discipline as to what was actually being put on the digital system and that it related to business in the house as opposed to people chatting in the back row and all the other things that occur in a legislature.
The numbers for viewership for the House of Lords are reasonably high. They compare to the numbers for the House of Commons. It is also covered on C-SPAN. On occasion, CPAC has covered the House of Lords as well, and it has been covering both the Senate and the Parliament of Australia — not consistently but from time to time. There is quite a bit of activity going on in our Commonwealth parliaments, but I cannot give you any information about the details of the American system because I do not know them.
The Chair: We have spoken with CPAC and they are interested in coming and appearing before this committee to give their views on the proposal.
Senator Segal: When the bill was initially presented, they came to see me and expressed great concern about the cost, which was understandable. I said we were far away from getting to that point in the discussion and that would be beyond my pay scale in any circumstance.
Senator Cools: Before we continue, can we clarify for a moment? As I understand it, the issue before the committee is a motion, but I believe Senator Segal has made reference to a bill. What are we studying? Are we studying a bill?
The Chair: A motion.
Senator Cools: Senator Segal has two different debates going on in the Senate. There are two, right? There is one on the motion and then there is a bill.
Senator Segal: No. I am aware of no bill on this matter in the chamber.
Senator Cools: You said bill a few moments ago.
Senator Segal: I apologize. It is just this motion.
Senator Banks: The motion, if I can make that point, is not exactly what is on this piece of paper. It is longer than this and goes on for a bit.
Senator Cools: This is the substance of the motion, though?
Senator Banks: Yes.
The Chair: This is the longer motion. Everyone has been sent that.
[Translation]
Senator Nolin: First, I would like to thank our colleagues for pursuing this idea with such determination. I must admit that, in the beginning, I was not in favour it. My concerns had to do with the theatrical displays that unfortunately sometimes occur in the House of Commons. I certainly did not want my institution to turn into that kind of a circus, which lacks class and is not in the best interests of Canadians, in my opinion.
That being said, I agree with you more and more. There is already a source of immeasurable information on the Internet. The Senate offers anyone interested a wide range of information such as bills, debates on bills, committee proceedings and the accompanying research material. Your proposal is to add the video content of what is already available in written form.
Today, the committee is asking us simply to accept the principle given that the financial and procedural aspects will be examined by the Standing Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration. Is that the extent of your proposal?
Senator Segal: Yes.
Senator Nolin: In other words, the written content is already there. It is accessible to everyone with very little in the way of editing, and you are proposing that we add the video that goes with that written content, correct?
Senator Segal: That is correct. If this committee, in its wisdom, and the Senate chamber decided to proceed as you have just described, I would be delighted.
Senator Nolin: I quite like your proposal, Senator Banks.
[English]
For example, three years from now, someone looking into the archives either for yesterday's record or for one from 10 years ago will be able not only to look at the text but also to have in front of him or her everything, including the audio-visual, to be able to understand what we are doing for them. For me, that is the main argument for supporting this.
Senator Banks: Exactly. It is even better, might I suggest, than Hansard, for the reason that I mentioned earlier. Presently, to find the debates that have taken place on a given bill is for the average person impenetrably difficult, unless one has some expertise as a researcher. This would categorize the subject so it is all there, organized in one package in the exact consecutive order in which it occurred. One would not have to wade through all the other stuff to see what was done about a particular question.
Senator Smith: I will start off by saying I do remain open-minded about this. I have several questions. I will put them out there so you can respond.
First, we have to nail down these costs. With great respect, Senator Banks, there is no way this is six figures.
Senator Banks: I said six zeros.
Senator Smith: I like straight play in English, how many millions or billions it is. I do recall the last time. The recently retired Senator Corbin had put a motion forward and initiated this. Someone came in and said the room up at the top there had to be re-fixed. That alone would cost over $1 million. I remember the senator saying if he had known that, he would not have put it on the Order Paper. That is just the tip of the iceberg. No doubt there would be additional staff and interpretation and cameras and other committee rooms. I am open-minded, but I think we must have a real, hard-nosed cost.
You want some comfort that you would have real time on the air. Presumably it would have to be from CPAC at the moment, but if they have to choose between us and Question Period in the House Commons, you know with whom they will go.
I agree to some extent with the point made that if you have to listen to "stand, stand," for half an hour, maybe that would be welcomed by insomniacs all over Canada because it would be a cure for insomnia. However, I think we need to take a real hard look at that. When they say it will cost more money, we need to know.
In Toronto, for example, which is the largest urban area in Canada with over 6 million people in the GTA alone, it is difficult to get CPAC. I get it on Channel 97, but The Star, which lists about 50 channels, does not even show what is on CPAC; and when you do turn CPAC on, it is so fuzzy that you usually cannot watch it. I do not know whether other people have a better experience, but I find it very frustrating.
We need to have a hard-nosed evaluation of how much money they will be looking for. I cannot see a second channel being started. Yes, maybe it would be on at two or three o'clock in the morning. I just do not know.
I am a big supporter of coverage of our standing committees. I frequently hear people comment that it is interesting, particularly when we have witnesses. That is a very good face for the Senate.
I want to get a good feel for this issue. I cannot resist asking you, Senator Segal, because the last time you were pushing for this, you also had a motion for a vote on the abolition. I just looked at the Order Paper, and I thought that we better find out the answer to that before we spend all this money.
Is your motion deleted now or has it disappeared?
Senator Segal: No, it is not. However, in my view, it does not relate to this.
Senator Smith: It is not irrelevant.
Senator Segal: Let me tell you why I think it is irrelevant. It goes to the issue of motivation. I did not present this motion to diminish the institution.
Senator Smith: I am not suggesting that.
Senator Segal: I presented this motion for the purpose of expanding the reach of the institution, expanding the number of people who know what is going on, and expanding the accessibility.
Quite frankly, while I am delighted that CPAC is being called before you and will give their views, the model set out by Senator Nolin of a video stream available on the Senate website would be absolutely fine for me and I do not think it would have to have that level of cost, about which you are justifiably concerned.
If the Board of Internal Economy, in its wisdom, could not find a reasonable cost base for doing this and decided not to proceed, I would view that as a completely fair and appropriate decision and I would support it 100 per cent. However, I do agree with Senator Banks, and we have one or two other senators here, including Senator Duffy, who are aware of the new reality of miniaturization and the ease with which visuals can be transmitted around the world at very little cost.
I would like to think that if this did pass the committee, in its wisdom, and then the house, that the Board of Internal Economy could take a look at some of those options and come to its own rational decision, which I would support either way, 100 per cent.
Senator Smith: I remain open-minded, Senator Banks.
Senator Banks: Senator Smith, I understand your concern. While I hope that you will talk to CPAC, since they are among the means by which what we are talking about could be distributed, they are only one means.
I do not have the full motion before me, but you will see that it refers to not a single means of delivery. There is not a single stream. There is not a single pipeline. You are right: if we are limited to CPAC, we are limited not only by the technical shortcomings that CPAC finds itself under in delivering a fuzzy signal that is not even obtainable in some places, but we also are at the mercy of whoever in CPAC is deciding on a day-to-day basis what will be put on and when it will be put on.
What we are suggesting — and it was referred to by Senator Nolin — is that this could be done tomorrow afternoon on a Senate streamed website at no distribution cost whatever. It could be done, in my view, very soon. I have had a couple of conversations about this, and I believe that if we made a simple, straightforward presentation for a dedicated Senate cable channel, the CRTC would view that quite favourably, and then we would not be at the pleasure of someone else as to when our committee meetings are on the air.
The interactive factor in that kind of television, of being able to identify a particular subject or area or time or speaker or committee, is not far off. You would have the capacity to do that in a number of places: on a streamed, YouTube-like set-up on the Senate website, which could be done immediately; or on a dedicated channel; or on CPAC, if we can negotiate something with them; and by other means, whether or not now known.
One thing of which you can be sure is that the exponential growth you have seen in the last five years in the number of pipelines that are out there by which people can receive information is nothing compared to what it will be in the next five, never mind ten, years.
Senator Smith: That I get.
Senator McCoy: I have a series of questions. The first one is with regard to my recollection of the testimony from the House of Lords, a committee meeting that I was pleased to attend. As I recall, neither of the Lords could remember whether they ever knew how many viewers they received. After some casting about, their clerk thought that it was 50,000 viewers per year. Since the channel was devoted to both House of Commons and House of Lords business, they could not distinguish between the two. If my recollection of 50,000 viewers is correct, that means one-twelfth of 1 per cent of the British public occasionally see some part of their parliamentary process on television. Given the concerns over cost, it seems to me to be a rather expensive communications device for the Senate of Canada.
I have a question for both of you. One of my continuing curiosities is whether anyone has consulted with a communications expert, someone who knows the communications market these days and who understands that successful YouTube videos, for example, are rarely more than four or five minutes long and that tweets are restricted to, I think, 140 characters. The miniaturization that might be striking through our communications world has to do with the short time span that is devoted to any one piece of information going out.
Have we consulted with professional communicators, not entertainers or talking heads, but people who are actually in the market attempting to get messages out?
Senator Segal: It was my view — and Senator Banks shared this view — that that was the kind of detailed consideration of implementation that fell within the purview of the Board of Internal Economy. For us, the core premise was to advance the principle for colleagues to reflect upon and decide upon; and then, if it was decided to proceed, the Board of Internal Economy would, we are sure, equip themselves of all that detailed communications expertise and would decide whether there is a financially rational basis on which to proceed, to connect with Senator Smith's concern.
That being said, where we would perhaps respectfully differ is that I would love to see 10 million viewers, but I think a vast majority of Canadians have a life, and the arcane discussions in the Senate might not turn them on, but that is okay. It is not for us to decide, at least in principle, what they decide to see. As taxpayers, they should have the right of access to sort out what they think is appropriate. If that can be done on a cost-efficient basis, taking into concern your legitimate reference to how small the viewership might initially be, so much the better. If it cannot be done on a cost- efficient basis, I expect the proposition would die a natural but well-informed death at the Internal Economy Committee.
Senator Banks: If we each simply referred all of the people who have written to us about Bill C-6 to the Senate- streamed channel, we would have more than one-twelfth of the Canadian population. That would be a useful device.
Senator McCoy: It was one-twelfth of 1 per cent.
Senator Banks: I am joking a bit there, but not by much. That is an example of how this would be extremely useful. I agree that the numbers are not as important. I do not think we will compete with Glenn Anderson doing triple axels with this programming, but we do not equate. We have not judged that we should make Hansard available on the Internet as it is now on the basis of whether it would receive a large readership; we have made Hansard available on the Internet because of the matter of principle. We think that we ought to be that open. We ought to ensure that Canadians can see what we do. The cost of doing that, which at the time happened to be a great deal, was not a factor in our considerations as to whether we should do that. I do not think that it will ever be possible to measure, on any overnight basis, how many people watched this or how many people did not, because it will go up and down. Equating viewership with cost is a dangerous slope. If we say that what we or entertainers or news programmers put on will be based on reacting entirely to viewership, then information dissemination will become a very sad place.
Senator McCoy: Thank you for your response, but Senator Banks, you did open your remarks by saying that we have indeed given full access to Hansard, albeit in an old fashioned mode. Has any consideration been given to actually making Hansard and committee transcripts and committee reports available in a digital form, for example, and the cost that would incur, just to actually succeed in at least one medium, if not video, to make our proceedings accessible to the Canadian public and others?
Senator Banks: I think they are.
Senator McCoy: No, I beg to differ.
The Chair: They are on the Internet.
Senator Banks: That is digital.
Senator McCoy: Let me put it this way. I could not find any proceedings of the Senate digitalized before 1999.
Senator Banks: I agree that in the past we have not done that. In fact, if you went to the library, you would find that the Debates of the Senate have not all been preserved. They are in the process now of being reconstructed on the basis of the best the researchers can do. We cannot fix the past. I agree that if you are doing archival research on something that went on in the 1960s or the 1910s, it is not digitally available. What we are talking about here is going forward, not back.
Senator McCoy: One of you expressed the desire to have real-time access, and it can take up to a month for proceedings of a committee to be posted online. Has any consideration been given to making what we do offer somewhat more accessible to those who might want real-time access?
Senator Banks: I will take a shot at that, if you will allow me, Senator Segal.
In connection with the question that you also asked earlier about whether we talked to anybody, I have not talked to anyone who is a communicator in the sense that I think you meant it, that is to say, a communications guru in the strategic sense. The people I have talked to are people of whom I have asked the question, "Is this practically doable with the state of equipment that exists now?" The answer I have received is yes, and at not all that great a cost. It would be millions of dollars on an ongoing aggregate basis to do this, not in the print form and not in the getting it up on the digital Internet quickly. It answers the question that you raised precisely, senator, in that, as I said earlier, this meeting in its entirety would be available tomorrow afternoon, if not this afternoon. That kind of access is more cogent to today's Canadians than trying to find their way through the Order Paper, even digitally on the Internet.
Senator McCoy: Have you given any consideration to privilege? After all, Hansard and other publications of the Senate are under privilege. I do not intend to get into that long and somewhat convoluted discussion, but some restrictions are placed on republication of our materials that have been assiduously guarded. Have you given any consideration to that aspect of this question?
Senator Segal: I have, and I was informed by some former table staff that the rules of privilege with respect to the House of Commons are not in any way diluted by virtue of the fact that that is broadcast for all to see. Somebody who says something in the House of Commons is as protected by privilege as he or she would have been prior to televising, and that principle should, barring some new jurisprudence, which is always a risk, apply as well in the upper chamber.
Senator Banks: That is what I have been told as well.
Senator Cools: I have a supplementary, following on Senator McCoy's intervention. She has raised an extremely important and vital point to do with the whole question of the law of privilege. Senator Segal, you responded very pleasantly, I thought, to one aspect of privilege that we would call liability to individual suits. I do not think that matter is ever in doubt. The real questions of privilege that underscore this have to do with the questions of editing and the actual choices that individuals will be making. I noticed before that some of us were unwisely using the word "editing." An "edit" is a different phenomenon from an "abridgement." The houses are very jealous of having their proceedings abridged in telecasting and even in publishing. There is a lot of history behind this point.
Mr. Chairman, I really think that we should have some discussions on this point. I know that some senators will say we can bring in some experts, but quite often the experts are not very expert in this particular matter.
Senator Segal, following on Senator McCoy's question, have you given any thought to that?
Senator Segal: I have, but only to the extent of the principle that editing and packaging would not allow for abridgement in any way, shape or form. Did I in any way respond to the concern raised by you and Senator McCoy?
I do not want to be out of place, but either this committee or the Internal Economy Committee in its wisdom may want to consider an opinion from law officers of the Crown looking at the precedents to ensure that we are not unwittingly setting up something that would allow for abridgment in a way that would violate the issue of privilege. Certainly, my commitment going in, and it is the same as Senator Banks', is that everything a senator says in the chamber, in committee or in Committee of the Whole, would be part of the formal record. Whether people would choose to access a particular debate on an arcane matter in rural Eastern Ontario, God only knows, but it would be there, and no one could decide that what I said or someone said was inappropriate or a waste of time. That principle has to be inviolate.
[Translation]
Senator Mockler: I witnessed the introduction of the new era of communication at the Legislative Assembly of New Brunswick. I want to commend Senator Segal and Senator Banks on their motion.
On a recent visit to Tim Hortons or McDonald's, I was asked what we do in the Senate. When people see us on television at three in the morning, they understand how much work we do. The public does not know much about what we do. Clearly, there is a cost attached to this, but there is also a huge advantage to having an informed public that can play an active role in what we call "public participation".
First, how would the proposed changes help the way the Senate operates? Second, we need to kick-start civic participation among seniors as well as younger people. Young people are more active, and we should encourage them to continue that. I would like to hear what you have to say about all this.
[English]
Senator Banks: The first and most important thing, senator, if I can be a little humorous, is that they will see that not all senators are old, doddering and grey-haired.
The short answer, Senator Mockler, is the light that you have referred to when you go to McDonald's and hear people say they have seen what you do. There is no way of proving this, but I suspect that it would increase the number of people who say, "I watched that debate in committee or on the Senate floor and found it very interesting and informative." It would bring the light onto what we do, which Senator Segal originally referred to when he first introduced this motion. To most Canadians, the Senate, its workings and what it does are impenetrable. They do not know what we do, and I think that would be the greatest advantage to this institution.
[Translation]
Senator Segal: Publicly educating young people about our system of government, the work done by both chambers, and the balances in our Constitution — which Senator Joyal discussed in his book — is missing from the public debate, whether we agree with Senate reform or not.
I have been on the Senate a little less than five years now. When I got here, I was completely taken aback by the day- to-day workload of Senators and by how the Senate corrects the government, regardless of the party in power, on technical flaws in fundamental aspects of bills, flaws that were not addressed during unanimous votes in the House of Commons.
Knowledge of our institution, the detailed work we do and our regulations is missing from the public debate. This is also a shortcoming when it comes to educating young people on Canada's history, our democratic system and the major debates in history. Why not take advantage of this forum so that students can learn in the classroom about important topics of the day such as national security and poverty? It would not only educate the public, but also encourage young people to get involved in the electoral system.
As you know, engaging young people as voters and as party members is a serious problem for Canada.
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Senator Furey: I realize, Senator Segal, that, as you indicated, we are debating the principle this morning, and I am not opposed to it. However, we have to be practical. It was three years ago that Senator Atkins indicated at this committee that while the cost was substantial, it would not be prohibitive. I do not think I need to remind colleagues that the economy has changed significantly since then.
In your considerations, deliberations and discussions, have you talked to anyone about long-term vision and planning for Parliament? The current program will require, sometime in the near future, the temporary relocation of the actual Senate Chamber; unfortunately, the date keeps changing. Have you taken that into consideration?
Senator Segal: As I am unalterably opposed to the temporary relocation of either chamber, I have not given it any serious consideration, so you are more than correct in pointing it out.
Senator Furey: Thank you.
Senator Cools: Mr. Chair, when is the proposed date for that relocation? I have been hearing about it for a few years, but since Senator Furey has raised the issue, it should be put on the record.
Senator Furey: Perhaps the best thing to do is to bring someone from long-term vision and planning to give us an overview because it is a serious consideration.
Senator Cools: Who are they? Who are the long-term planners and visionaries for the Senate and the House of Commons? Are any of them members of the houses? We do not know. I am hearing a date. I heard one senator say "next year."
Senator Furey: No, it has changed. In a couple of updates that we have received, Senator Cools, it has changed from five years. At one point, it was from 12 years back to five, and I do not know where it is now.
Senator Cools: That is 12 years from now. Some of us may be gone by then.
Senator Furey: The thing that changed the planning was the West Block and the importance of moving the renovations to the West Block because of the health issues further up the scale. The Centre Block will be relocated at some time in the near future. As to what date that is, it is best to bring somebody here to try to get an idea of what it would be, but it would be sometime, I would suggest, in the next five to 10 years.
Senator Banks: I did ask that question. It was in the course of inquiring, as I did, in the most general way, about the costs of installation — not of purchasing the equipment but its installation and the wiring that goes with it. It is not significant. Once we have dealt with the cost of the cameras, the control units and all of that, the wiring is almost like an electrician's job. I asked about moving because this subject has been around for a few years, and the information that I got, informally, was that it would be $20,000 or $30,000 to move four cameras from this room into another room over there and put in the wiring. That is not the cost of the cameras.
Senator Furey: I know what you are saying, Senator Banks; thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Furey. We have taken note of your comment and will discuss it in the steering committee.
Senator Fraser: You are both aware that I am unalterably opposed to televising the proceedings of the chamber, essentially on the grounds that we would heighten the risk of becoming a circus, as Senator Nolin suggested. The reason for that is that television is of the moment. If you want to have an impact, you have to have an impact this moment, and the dynamic of that leads people to engage in more extreme behaviour than they normally would do in our chamber. I would hate to see that happen.
I am, however, extremely interested in the notion of, if you will, a visual archive on the Internet, and I have said this in the chamber. It would mean using cameras, but it would mean using the product in a different way. Yes, there would be the capacity to access the whole debate in the chamber gavel-to-gavel, stand, stand, stand. More interestingly, one would be able to access debates on, for example, a given bill under the classification of that bill, every debate, every question, every amendment, subamendment, vote, what have you. That, for anyone who is seriously interested in the work of Parliament, would be extremely interesting.
That said, as Senator McCoy was suggesting, our present website is not all that it might be. I cast no aspersions here on the people who do it. We all know that everyone operates with fewer resources, less of everything than they need. I give you for example an occasion in my own office last week when we were trying to find the date of a specific exchange in the chamber that should have been indexed under one of the basic standing headings. This was not some obscure angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin question. It took hours to track it down because it had somehow not been indexed. Of course, the indexing is all for the kind of system I am talking about.
That is a long preamble. Are you aware of any legislature that now does the kind of visual archiving accessible as one accesses computer archives anywhere? Does any legislature do that now anywhere at all? Second, does any legislature do it well?
Senator Segal: My only knowledge is a derivative process that the BBC and ABC in Australia have: on their website when they are covering a matter of significance one can go to a digital video feed of what transpired in that exchange. I am not aware of any legislature that has gone down that road. If we were to go this route, we would be breaking new ground.
Let me also say that the notion that Senator Banks and I are saying, "It is now or never; it is all or nothing," is completely disconnected from where we respectfully are on this issue. It may very well be that colleagues in their wisdom say we should be aiming at a visual presence but we want to clean up, increase, improve and make more contemporary and timely some of the other aspects of our digital presence on the Internet, as Senator Nolin discussed. I would be untroubled by that. The notion that we go in an organized fashion and look at the visual option as one of a series of steps we would take in the future strikes me as completely reasonable. The notion, if I might say, with respect, that we would proceed down that road without giving any consideration to how we might do the visual thing in a cost- efficient, accessible way would also strike me as a little disconnected to the reality, especially for young Canadians who have a genuine, authentic desire to connect with the event as opposed to with what someone else might have said or written about the event.
Senator Banks: I agree.
Senator Fraser: I remain fascinated by the possibilities here and very dubious about what I would see as an interim phase of simply televising.
Senator Banks: I have to say that I do not quite understand the distinction between what we envision and what you described. I think that you described exactly what we are talking about, except that rather than being archival, it would be available tomorrow.
The Chair: Senator Fraser, can you explain more your concept of the visual archive?
Senator Fraser: I am talking about an entirely web-based system. Forget CPAC. I have no idea what that would do to cost projections. I suspect that while the diffusion of a web-based system of getting our material out there would be free, the preparation of it, if it were going to be properly done, would be very costly indeed, which might or might not put paid to the whole thing.
I want to stay a thousand miles away from television qua television because of the fact that in television there is no going back, there is no searching, there is no follow-through. You get what is said in debate today where someone stands up and says, "The minister who proposed this is obviously in favour of pedophilia," and you do not get the responding debate, whereas I am talking about a system whereby it would all be available sequentially so that even if the actual response in the chamber occurred some days later, it would be right there in the archives so that anyone interested would find it all; you would not have to go searching day after day.
Television, I repeat, is episodic. You make it onto today's film; you have an impact on today's film, and if you do not, it is gone forever. Basically, in order to have the kind of impact politicians tend to want to have, all too often you have to slip toward entertainment rather than substantive debate. That is what people end up doing. They end up being more outrageous in order to get that entertainment impact.
Senator Segal: If we were to proceed along the route that I think Senator Fraser has reflected on positively, namely a digital archive over time, we would also connect with Senator McCoy's concern, because we would know very quickly once it was up and running and we let people know about it how many hits it was getting. If the hits were real and the numbers meaningful, we would find networks coming to us and we could make that decision at that time based on your concerns. Having it up so that people could go to it as a digital archive would tell us quickly how many hits we have and where they are coming from, at least by region, and that would give this committee and Internal Economy all kinds of data to decide what the next step forward might be or might not be under the circumstances.
The Chair: In relation to Senator Fraser's comment, I am told by the table that the House of Commons has a system called Prism, which we do not have here in the Senate but which the Senate is now looking at. Prism is a system whereby they can tag the debates and give the kind of notations and data that Senator Fraser has referred to. They have access to Prism that we do not have as of yet.
Senator Banks: This would be along those same lines but a little more inclusive.
Unless I am completely dense, Senator Fraser, you have described exactly what we are proposing.
Senator Fraser: I apologize if I am wasting everyone's time. I truly do.
Senator Banks: It is not a waste of time. With respect to the acting business, I appeared before this committee a few years ago when we were talking about gavel-to-gavel coverage and made precisely the argument you just made: we are human, there are politics and we will become like that. I suggest hopefully, if I am using that word properly, that in this instance, because the stuff would be compiled precisely as you describe so that if someone wants to see, and we know a lot of people want to see, what is going on with Bill C-6, for example, we can refer them to one place on the Internet where they would find sequentially, in the exact order in which the events occurred, from the introduction and first reading down to the vote at third reading, exactly what happened and exactly what everyone said down to the last word.
Senator Fraser: We do not know whether anyone is doing this so we do not have a model to consult.
Senator Banks: No.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Fraser, for your stimulating questions and comments.
Senator Cools: I would like to begin by thanking Senator Banks and Senator Segal for their considerable work on this issue. I would especially like to thank Senator Segal for his perseverance with this initiative. I appreciate it, and I think we all owe him a debt for that.
I believe the language of Parliament is no longer known, even to members, so I will use an old parliamentary language. I think that all of us, as public men and public women — that is what we used to be called before this word "politicians" became de rigueur — have a bounden duty to bring our proceedings and deliberations before the public. I sincerely believe that. I feel quite strongly about this.
However, I understand that the issue is not who is for and who is against. I think it is far more complex than whether any senator is for the public broadcasting or televising of it or not. I think the problems rest in the actual delivery. I think the devil is in those details of how such a thing can be achieved. Maybe we can view this committee study as a preliminary step. I hope we are prepared to give this matter the time it deserves so that we can tease out and get a handle on the complexity of the details, because the details are vast and myriad.
My mind is open on this particular initiative. If I were writing this motion, Senator Segal, I would have done it quite differently, but I did not write it and that is fine and dandy. What we have before us is a motion that was not approved. Was it referred to the committee before it was voted on? It has not been adopted in the house, has it?
The Chair: No.
Senator Cools: It is in advance.
We are here deliberating the feasibilities, that is, for a discussion of what is possible. In principle, most people are with us.
Having said that, I think Senator Fraser has raised an important point. This whole phenomenon of entertainment and being entertained is a huge difficulty. I sometimes watch many so-called big-name politicians. I share the view that Senator Fraser has raised. I have wanted to be many things in my life, but never an entertainer.
Senator Banks: Entertaining, though.
Senator Cools: I have never even had to work at that. The political condition in this country is extremely serious. Canadians are totally alienated from the institutions of governance. Canadians no longer know the language of Parliament. That is not surprising, because most members of the House of Commons do not know the language of Parliament. I hate to shock individuals, but most government ministers do not speak in the language of Parliament. When the lexicon is lost, it is only a matter of time before the substance is lost.
I view Senate debates as so important that any attempt we can possibly make to bring them to people I think would add to the richness of their lives and to the richness of their understanding the system. I hear colleagues speaking about the fact that no one reads Debates, but it was not too long ago when every member of the House of Commons used to have an allocation of so many full Debates that they could give to so many constituents. I know, because back in the 1970s I received one of those through a particular member. I got a copy of the House of Commons Debates in total daily, weekly, monthly and yearly.
I wince when I hear the constant concern about who will watch this. My experience in life, quite frankly, is that I do not have to work too hard to get people interested in our work. I have never had difficulty convincing an audience that the Senate is a worthwhile institution and that senators do good work, but I understand other people have that difficulty. I am saying to you that collectively we can overcome that by taking our work seriously, by reading more, and by tracing the thread of the law more thoroughly. I think we have a bounden duty to do so.
I have an open mind on this. I do not think this motion will do the job, quite frankly, but I do think a good study of the facets of this proposal should take place. I do not know enough about the world of communications; I do not know who the gurus are nor what makes one a guru; and I do not know how expertise is decided among them. However, I do know that we should be approaching this in a novel way and not be just thinking that televising or broadcasting this means CPAC. I think our minds should be totally open and beginning from scratch on every single item.
I do not know what we call CPAC. Do you call that delivery? I do not know the language of this business, but I do know that we owe it the citizens of Canada and to the development and the elevation of politics in Canada to bring our debates to the public. As I said, I have an open mind on every proposal that is put before us, and I shall be voting as I see fit on each and every proposal.
Perhaps here we could also be receiving suggested names as witnesses, because this is a massive issue.
The Chair: If you have names, please submit them.
Senator Cools: Senator Smith was interested in the costs. It is worthwhile to be interested in the costs, and we should have an idea of what we are talking about. I do believe it is time for us to look at this with interest and in a positive way. If we are dissatisfied with the motion or with any aspect of it, we can bring it to what we want it to be. That is easy enough to do.
I have done a lot of public speaking in my lifetime on difficult, complex issues. It takes a lot of work to be able to sustain a debate for hours. If we could let the public see that that kind of work does go on in the Senate, I believe we would find that some of the assaults coming at the Senate would cease. Granted, some of them have been coming from the government itself, which is a novel situation we find ourselves in. That is, the government itself is perpetrating a certain number of assaults on the Senate. However, if we would reach into the richness of the history and the richness of the systems, we would be able to answer every single question.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Cools. As Senator Banks said in his opening statements, the purpose of this is to bring light to the proceedings of the Senate.
Senator Banks: Senator Segal said that a long time ago.
The Chair: You also said it today.
Senator Joyal: Thank you, senators, for your input. As we can see the situation, there are two ways to approach this issue of broadcasting. First, there is CPAC, a traditional television channel, the optimum being that we have our own channel, the House of Commons has its own channel, and we package our own channel the way we want. That is one option, and that might in fact be the option you are contemplating, roughly, in your motion. Without knowing the exact figures, we know that this option is costly. Of course we will have to depend upon additional information to know exactly the budgetary consequences attached to that option.
The other option is the website option. The website option has some advantages. You can stock, or pile up, the information. If you are interested in one issue, you can go back to it. You can make it user-friendly; that is, with the proper equipment, people can be anywhere and watch it. For instance, a teacher or professor could propose a study on the debates in the Senate, issues such as public safety or anti-terrorism or whatever, to see what the Senate has been saying on these issues and to ask students to study it and react to it. In that way, we would make our debates user- friendly.
It seems to me that this option, in comparison to the traditional, conventional option of a CPAC channel, has a lot of merit. We have four rooms ordinarily used for meetings by committees. We have 15 committees that could sit in public, and those 15 committees' materials provide 20 hours of material to be broadcast on CPAC. I say that without seeing the figures, but that means that most of the committee hearings are not broadcast. If there are 15 committees, in four rooms, for 20 hours, most of the material is not broadcast.
If we were to depend on the first option, to have most of the material of those committees already there, that material is lost. Therefore, it seems to me that we should be considering Option B, concentrating first on using the material that we already have, which is not even used, on a website of the Senate, with the opportunity to make it user- friendly in the way I described earlier.
It seems to me that if we are to approve the motion or give approval to this motion in principle, the second option should be reflected in the motion so that we know what we would be approving or refusing, with a realistic definition of it. I am not an expert on website technology, but someone could inform us generally of what we could do with the material that we already have in the archives. We would have more than what we have now, without changing very much the agreement with CPAC.
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Senator Segal: I completely agree with what my colleague said. Even though I spent much of my political career in Orange Ontario, I was born in Quebec, and I prefer to do things step by step — and I always will. The fact that we are starting with a video signal and with things that we already have available seems a practical way to go. At the beginning of the meeting, Senator Banks and I said in our remarks that if the committee preferred to go that route rather than with television, we would be delighted.
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Senator Joyal: I wonder whether the steering committee, perhaps with Senator Fraser — I do not know who is on the steering committee — could look into how we can have more information about the second option, what the costs would be and what would be involved in the Senate. It seems to me at first sight that the second option would be easier. I might be totally wrong. There might be technology implications that I cannot propose to you this morning. However, it seems to me that it would be a wise approach, probably involving fewer agents from outside the Senate. We would be more in control of our own production. There might be advantages there because it would be among senators.
With the first option, we would have to go outside of the Senate. Many decisions would have to be taken to implement the first option, as I call it, the conventional option of having a dedicated channel. Maybe the steering committee could help us.
The Chair: I am making a list of all the suggestions senators are making and I will be taking it to the steering committee. In his opening presentation, Senator Banks said he had talked to some people, and from those talks he learned that the CRTC would not be averse to an independent new channel. That is one of the items we will have on our list and that we will consider. It is a wonderful suggestion.
Senator Fraser: I think Senator Joyal has a brilliant suggestion. There is material available, and if we could do a pilot project using that material, for the kind of web-based archive I am talking about, it would give us all a better idea of the feasibility of a much more complete system.
Senator Banks: Senator Joyal has made an important suggestion, that the motion be amended by the committee. I want to draw senators' attention to the second and fourth paragraphs of the motion.
The second paragraph was careful to read "no fewer than four rooms," for reasons to which Senator Joyal has referred and to which Senator Fraser referred earlier. The fourth paragraph is where I think it might be useful to introduce what you have referred to as Option B. It was intended that that would be included in this when we said "distributors of audio-visual programs." Earlier we were talking precisely about the fact that if this material were available, it could be on the Senate website tomorrow.
The Chair: That proposed amendment will be considered by the committee.
Senator Wallace: Thank you, senators. When I think about your motion and what is at the root of it, it strikes me — and this is probably apparent to all of us — that it is not to convey information about the Senate to the public that is not available now, because it is available in the written form through Hansard, but there is a feeling that there is an effective medium that we are overlooking, and that is through tele-broadcasting.
A key point is that this may lead to having that broadcast used in television, which could well happen. The idea, from what I have heard you say, is to connect the Senate and to connect what we do in the Senate more effectively to the public, and to presumably increase the interest and awareness that the public has, in addition to the reality that there is an issue of transparency here. In theory, as much as possible, the public should know everything that is going on in this democratic process. That is agreed.
However, if the idea is to convey the message of what we do as effectively as possible — and as Senator Smith alluded to earlier, it is the public face of the Senate that would be broadcast — do you see the need, in conjunction with your motion, that we should be looking at how the broadcast will be received by the audience in the context of procedures and the reality of what happens day to day in the Senate Chamber? As Senator Smith pointed out — and in my rather brief time here, I would agree with this — it is one thing to look at the televised versions of Senate committee work. There is a lot of substance going into that, not to say that there is not in the chamber, but given the reality of what goes on day to day in the chamber and the procedure and so on, I question the positive way in which that would connect us with the public.
In order to use the medium as effectively as possible, do you see the need for us to also be looking procedurally at what we do in the chamber and to make it as clear as possible and as easily understood as possible to this new viewing audience that has not seen it before and has not seen what goes on before?
Senator Segal: I take Senator Fraser's caveat in response to your question very seriously. If we are talking about live television with all the difficulties associated therewith as listed by our colleague, the difficulty would be that, in order to respond to that presence, there would be the kind of grandstanding or other activity that would diminish the Senate and dilute one of its great strengths, which I would argue as someone new around the table is the relatively considered and civilized discussion of difficult and complex issues. It occurs more so in committee, but it happens in the chamber on occasion. I was not in the chamber at the time, but I had occasion to read the Hansard of the tremendous debate that took place on same-sex marriage. It was a tribute to any legislature anywhere in the world. Nobody can see that. I cannot go anywhere to digitally put that up and show it to friends of mine who might be on both sides of the issue. The digital archive issue would diminish some of the tensions that your question underlines about what TV would do to the procedures.
This committee will make recommendations on this and many other issues with respect to procedures down the road, and I would not want to prejudge that in any way, shape or form, but my view is that what is being suggested now by Senator Fraser and other senators around the table about a digital record will not create those problems ab initio as seriously as televising might in fact do.
Senator Banks: I agree that Senator Fraser has said better than we the nature of what we are talking about. I, like Senator Fraser, am unalterably opposed to gavel-to-gavel coverage of the Senate proceedings this afternoon, because that would do us a disservice. The editing we are talking about, and I use that word advisedly, would not cut out any word that any senator would say about any subject. Everything would be available if one wanted to access it. It would not be gavel-to-gavel coverage of Senate floor proceedings but would be done by subject matter so that we would see what you say this afternoon on that subject.
The Chair: In real-time?
Senator Banks: I am answering detailed questions about what would happen. My view is that if you wanted to look at what has been said in the Senate on the Terrorism Act or whatever, then, sitting in Pouce Coupe, you could push a button and that subject would come up. You would see the introduction and first reading, on the day that happened, and every word that was said when that was done. Then, instead of weeks of blanks, the next thing you would see would be the debate at second reading, the debate by the sponsor of the bill on Day 1 and then the response by the critic on the bill on Day 11, without having to go through days 2 to 10 to find them, et cetera. Then there would be the referral on the floor to committee, and exactly what that motion says, and then the committee business, the committee report back to the Senate, the debate at third reading, et cetera, in consecutive, chronological order.
The Chair: Thank you.
Senator Duffy: Some people have raised questions. Senator Cools asked what CPAC is called in the jargon of the business. It is called a BDU, a broadcast distribution undertaking. That is what they call CPAC and other cable companies.
Some of you may have heard about Web 2.0, the World Wide Web 2.0. The original World Wide Web was built on an expansion of a two-lane highway. They are now building a web that is designed for high speed totally. Many of the questions that have been raised, particularly by Senator Joyal and some others, will in effect become academic.
We are not dealing with broadcasting; we are dealing with narrowcasting. That is the world in which we exist today, and everyone narrowcasts because you have specific audiences and in the 500-channel universe that is available. Today, when you have high speed, you have between three and seven megabits, depending on how much you are prepared to pay at home. At Alcatel in Kanata, they are actively working on 100 megabits, and in the Southeastern U.S., Verizon is rolling out 100 megabits fibre optics to your house.
In the next five years, we will not need BDUs or any other intermediary. We will be able to do this directly ourselves through the streaming computers that we will have. The technology is coming. We think five years is a long time, but, in this day and age, when everybody is looking for a jump on everybody else, it will come quickly.
The cameras used to be the size of a shoe box. They are now the size of your fist. They have very high light sensitivity. We will not need lights as bright as they are in the Senate Chamber now. That technology has arrived. Basically, you do everything in available light. You see people going around taking pictures with their cell phone cameras, and no flash goes off. That is how sensitive the diodes are in those cameras. They do not need a flash to give you a picture.
As I say, we are going up to 100 megabytes delivered to your house, so you will be able to watch that committee streaming. You will be able to watch the Senate Chamber. You will be able to watch whatever we put up because we do not send everything to every house. That is what broadcasting does. Broadcasting sends everything, and then you select. With narrowcasting, you select and tell us what you want, and we only use the bandwidth to send that. It is the reverse. It is turned on its head. You can do it now and it will be even better.
Senator McCoy mentioned tweets. There is no reason why the Hansard here, as it is being typed, cannot be live blogged to the web. There is the whole issue of editing and the final approval and whatever, but basically the technology exists. These laptops are on the web. The laptops in the chamber are on the web. It is only the senators, except for the BlackBerrys, who are not on the web in the chamber.
It is coming. We should not worry about some of those initial things. CPAC will love us to death, because they want $6 million or $7 million to start a second conventional broadcast delivery undertaking, and maybe we dance with them for a year or two until this other stuff comes along.
I do have one other little question. When we digitize Hansard, if we do not take the picture from the Senate, will we take the audio with the Hansard, because the audio is there as well? I leave that with you. It is coming. It will be here. Instead of worrying about yesterday, we should jump ahead.
Senator Cools: That was a very good intervention.
The Chair: Thank you, Senator Duffy, for all that important information.
Senator Cools: Chairman, perhaps we could set aside a bit of time in a meeting to have another discussion and to be able to put questions to Senator Duffy so that he could share some of this experience and knowledge with us. I am not a big television watcher.
Senator Duffy: Senator, you were always very kind to come on my program whenever I asked you.
Senator Cools: That is different. I have done a lot of television interviews. I do not do a lot of television watching. Since Senator Duffy knows a lot about the business, maybe we could just set aside a few minutes in a meeting to expand our own knowledge. Perhaps I am dismally ignorant.
The Chair: That matter will come up before the steering committee for a decision.
Senator Brown: It has been brought to my attention that there is a sign above the two senators that says "public broadcast" in two languages. All we have to do is add TV to that, and we will all be happy.
I would like to tell you that for every action there is a reaction. I am fully in favour of having everything digitized or televised or web-sited that goes on in the chamber. The reaction will be that the public will sooner or later want to vote.
Senator Cools: Vote for what?
Senator Banks: Senators.
Senator Cools: They have not done that with the Prime Minister. The public is not asked to vote for the Prime Minister yet. He is an appointment, too.
Senator Segal: That will be a discussion for another place and another time.
While Senator Brown and I agree on some things and disagree on others, the issue is about the Senate, whether it is elected or appointed or a mix of both over time. I do not connect the two. It was quite appropriate for Senator Smith to ask that question. I see them as quite separate, and I, like Senator Brown, am opposed to the abolition of the Senate. I am for public discussion about its future.
Senator Banks: Nobody deserves to be in the Senate any more than Senator Brown because he worked at it, and I am delighted that he was appointed to the Senate.
Senator Cordy: I am not touching that one, either.
I want to thank you both so much for being so tenacious in your promotion of having the communications of the Senate brought to the public.
We have to remember, as senators, that it is 2009. Despite the fact that my children are much more adept at technology than I am, it is important that we realize we must communicate to the young people what we are doing. The way that will happen is not by the printed record that we have currently, unless somebody is studying it at university. It is by the Internet and by television. I want to thank you very much because it is important that we have a fulsome discussion on it and that we look at where we are now, make improvements and move forward to ensure that the public is very much aware of the excellent work the Senate is doing.
Senator Smith: I do not know whether we are at the point where we are ready to deal with motions, but there have been references to the steering committee looking at some of these issues. Quite frankly, given the time and expertise involved, this may be a situation where a special committee makes more sense. Time will be required. It is a huge issue. You will have to meet with many people. We would have to perhaps consult with the respective leaderships. There is expertise here, for example that of Senator Duffy. Also, given the other role of Senator Furey, there is cost, and we need to be very conscious of cost.
I am just putting out the idea. If you want to see us roll up our sleeves and get to work, you will need a special committee. For the reasons I have outlined, it is not something that should just automatically go to the steering committee.
The Chair: That is a good point.
Senators Banks and Segal, on behalf of the committee, I would like to thank you both for coming here today and making an excellent presentation.
I am sure you noticed that a while ago we had a full compliment. We had 15 senators around this table. That we had 100 per cent turnout is an indication that they are interested in the subject matter that your motion brings before us. You have articulated it clearly. You have helped raise many questions, and senators' questions also raised a lot of questions. This committee will do much more work before coming to the point of making a specific recommendation to the chamber.
A number of points have come up about the efficiency of our own website, how we are indexing our Hansard in a timely way and how long it takes to get our Debates up now. I have been told the practice is that they try to get proceedings up within 15 days for committees. Maybe things could be done at that level to improve.
Many preliminary things need to be done about the way the public has access to what we do here, other than the television approach you are making.
Another matter is that a number of people have indicated they are approaching your subject matter with an open mind, which is something that is growing.
There has been a strong suggestion that we need many more witnesses, such as CPAC, perhaps the CRTC, and perhaps we need information about a special dedicated channel for narrowcasting.
Senator Smith and others have said we must nail down the costs, so we need much more information on that. Senator Furey has reminded us that we should also take into consideration the effects the move of the Senate Chamber will have on any installation that may be made.
The Library of Parliament has told me in response to two matters that have come up that they are quite prepared and will start immediately doing a briefing note for all of us regarding what other jurisdictions are doing, such as other Commonwealth countries, the provinces and so on. We will be able to lay that before the committee before long.
Senators, on behalf of all the committee, I want to thank you sincerely for what you have done today and for your continued perseverance on this important topic to help give more transparency to the Senate.
Honourable senators, this meeting is now adjourned.
(The committee adjourned.)