Committee
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Consult the user guide
For assistance, please contact us
Add search criteria
Results: 1 - 15 of 497
View Alain Therrien Profile
BQ (QC)
Since I don't have the third motion in front of me, I will speak to you about the motions I'm going to keep.
We're presenting routine motions. We are doing what is already entered in the proceedings. We just want to sort everything out. I believe you have already received the first motion, which reads as follows:
That the clerk inform each witness who is to appear before the Committee that the House Administration support team must conduct technical tests to check the connectivity and the equipment used to ensure the best possible sound quality; and that the Chair advises the Committee, at the start of each meeting, of any witness who did not perform the required technical tests.
I believe that the clerk does this systematically. In fact I have mentioned to my colleagues that I'm on the best committee because of this. We are presenting this motion on all the committees. I'm really only introducing it here for consistency.
Should I develop this further or is it acceptable as is?
View Ruby Sahota Profile
Lib. (ON)
Do we have consensus to pass this motion? I see consensus.
(Motion agreed to)
View Luc Thériault Profile
BQ (QC)
View Luc Thériault Profile
2021-03-26 14:20
Mr. Chair, I thank my colleague.
The second routine motion concerns technical tests for witnesses. The motion reads:
That the clerk inform each witness who is to appear before the Committee that the House Administration support team must conduct technical tests to check the connectivity and the equipment used to ensure the best possible sound quality; and that the Chair advises the Committee, at the start of each meeting, of any witness who did not perform the required technical tests.
I know that tests are done to ensure sound quality and that things have improved over the course of the meetings, but the fact remains that the interpreters sometimes comment on the quality of the sound. Personally, I almost always use the interpretation channel when I attend committee meetings.
I think it would be a good idea for this motion to be adopted and, more importantly, for the chair to inform us about it right away. Scheduling our business and calling witnesses in advance allows this procedure to be updated at each committee meeting. We think it's important that this routine motion be adopted.
View Ron McKinnon Profile
Lib. (BC)
Thank you, Mr. Thériault.
Is there any discussion on Monsieur Thériault's motion?
I would advise, Monsieur Thériault, that absolutely the clerk makes every effort to do exactly this. It certainly is one of the reasons why we need substantial notice, several days' notice, to bring witnesses forward.
In any case, seeing no further discussion, I will call a vote.
(Motion agreed to)
The Chair: Thank you, Monsieur Thériault.
Mr. Davies, I believe you have a motion to move as well.
View Gabriel Ste-Marie Profile
BQ (QC)
The three motions that I'm going to present one after the other are about the ways in which the committee deals with respect for French. I can tell you that, from my perspective, the committee's procedures are impeccable. I have no complaints about them. The Chair, all members and the Clerk are very concerned with ensuring respect for both official languages, and therefore with the importance of French.
These three motions are from my whip's office, which suggests that they be adopted by all committees to establish standards in the way things are done. Again, I would say that this committee's procedures are at least equal, if not superior, to what is in these motions. However, adopting them here would send a message and help counter discrimination against unilingual francophone members of other committees.
If it's okay with you, I could start with the first motion, which has been translated and distributed and reads as follows:
That the clerk inform each witness who is to appear before the Committee that the House Administration support team must conduct technical tests to check the connectivity and the equipment used to ensure the best possible sound quality; and that the Chair advises the Committee, at the start of each meeting, of any witness who did not perform the required technical tests.
As I said, I don't see any problem with the way the committee is doing things. So the purpose of this motion is simply to endorse what I feel is already being done. So I move to adopt this motion.
View Mario Beaulieu Profile
BQ (QC)
Okay.
That the clerk inform each witness who is to appear before the Committee that the House Administration support team must conduct technical tests to check the connectivity and the equipment used to ensure the best possible sound quality; and that the Chair advises the Committee, at the start of each meeting, of any witness who did not perform the required technical tests.
View Marie-France Lalonde Profile
Lib. (ON)
I'd like to thank my colleague for introducing this motion. However, I believe we have witnesses to hear and I wouldn't be very happy about making them wait.
We recognize the importance of your motion, Mr. Beaulieu.
View Mario Simard Profile
BQ (QC)
View Mario Simard Profile
2021-03-08 12:52
Okay. The motion reads as follows:
That the clerk inform each witness who is to appear before the committee that the House Administration support team must conduct technical tests to check the connectivity and the equipment used to ensure the best possible sound quality; and that the Chair advises the committee, at the start of each meeting, of any witness who did not perform the required technical tests.
I just want to point out that this motion has been passed in every other committee where it was introduced.
View Bryan May Profile
Lib. (ON)
View Bryan May Profile
2021-03-08 12:53
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will simply say that I believe this is in fact the practice, and to simply formalize it, I think we'd be in favour of it.
View Dane Lloyd Profile
CPC (AB)
I think you'll find no trouble with us on this one. I would just move that we move to a vote.
View Rhéal Fortin Profile
BQ (QC)
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will propose the second motion, which concerns documents translated by the Translation Bureau:
That the Clerk inform each witness who is to appear before the Committee that the House Administration support team must conduct technical tests to check the connectivity and the equipment used to ensure the best possible sound quality; and that the Chair advise the Committee, at the start of each meeting, of any witness who did not perform the required technical tests.
Once again, the issue has not really been raised in all committees, but it has been brought up in some of them. The objective is to ensure that interpreters can hear testimony well, so that they can provide an accurate interpretation. This is just a formality.
Carrying out technical tests before the start of meetings will help us avoid meeting delays when witnesses don't have the right microphone or cannot be heard for whatever reason.
View Xavier Barsalou-Duval Profile
BQ (QC)
The motion reads as follows:
That the clerk inform each witness who is to appear before the Committee that the House Administration support team must conduct technical tests to check the connectivity and the equipment used to ensure the best possible sound quality; and that the Chair advises the Committee, at the start of each meeting, of any witness who did not perform the required technical tests.
Michael MacPherson
View Michael MacPherson Profile
Michael MacPherson
2021-02-25 16:59
Beginning with the testing of witnesses and the use of headsets and whatnot, our current practice is that all witnesses are tested before appearing at committee. We make every effort to make sure that every witness is provided with a headset. It's not always possible to get a witness a headset in time. We do have express delivery of those headsets and the House makes every effort to get them to witnesses. If they're in a major metropolitan area, we can get them to the witnesses the next morning. On that issue, when dealing with testing of witnesses, if the committee would like to codify it as a practice, that is great, but I will point out that we're already doing it, just to reassure all members this is indeed the case.
With regard to the other motions, Mr. Bachrach raised an issue of when it comes to amendments from the floor. My concern just administratively here in trying to support the committee is who would be doing this translation service. It's not actually a function of the interpreters in the room. Some motions, particularly when you start to deal with bills and whatnot, cannot just be done via straight translation. There actually are specialized translators who work on those documents.
Certainly it's not the role of the clerk to do that. The clerk could not be translating documents at committee. We are not certified translators. That said, those are just some administrative concerns.
On motions, the committee does have a routine motion that all documents, of course, are to be distributed only by the clerk and only when they're available in both official languages. One would expect that does occur pretty much in a hundred per cent of the cases that I can think of here in committee.
I am trying to think of any other pertinent information.
There's an issue with the Translation Bureau as well. Sometimes we have stakeholder groups or whatnot who provide us with pre-translated briefs. Maybe they're already posted on their websites. These could be publications that the stakeholder group has already put out in both languages. Sometimes these are copyrighted, and so to have those then sent to the Translation Bureau might be a little bit problematic, but, of course, if the committee wants us to do that, we can do that.
View Gerald Soroka Profile
CPC (AB)
View Gerald Soroka Profile
2021-02-25 17:03
My question is about the fact that for the most part we've been pretty good with sound quality, but it's about the interpretation services. As Ms. Gillis put forward, can we also check that at the same time? I don't know if the interpreters are on at the same time you're doing the voice checking or if they have to alternate between the two.
Michael MacPherson
View Michael MacPherson Profile
Michael MacPherson
2021-02-25 17:04
It's my understanding that the sound quality is checked as part of the process for checking the witnesses' connectivity and sound quality.
Results: 1 - 15 of 497 | Page: 1 of 34

1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
>
>|
Export As: XML CSV RSS

For more data options, please see Open Data