[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]
Tuesday, June 4, 1996
.1144 
[English]
The Chair: I call this meeting to order.
We're going for the member comment on the event.
Mrs. Payne (St. John's West): The wrong member is here.
The Chair: You weren't there, Jean. Jean wasn't at the event.
Mr. Jean-Luc Bourdages (Committee Researcher): She was on the first day.
Mrs. Payne: Yes, I was in and out.
The Chair: What was the final budget, then?
The Clerk of the Committee: So far we have spent $6,898 on the forum, and the whole budget was $12,000.
The Chair: How much of that do you think you're going to still have to spend?
The Clerk: We have roughly $5,000 to go. We could expect about 14 other reimbursements. We have 10 so far and there's a potential of 14.
The Chair: That's maximum.
The Clerk: Yes. I mean 14 requests, not $14,000.
.1145
The Chair: Oh, 14 requests. So what's your maximum, then?
The Clerk: My maximum is $12,000.
The Chair: Are you going to be under your maximum or over?
The Clerk: We hope we're going to be under our maximum.
Mrs. Payne: Maybe the government should hire you to look at its budget.
The Chair: Yes, exactly.
Let's go to the output options. The video option is on the back of the page. It's my understanding, Norm, that we cannot have edited versions of the televised recordings of the videotape.
Mr. Normand Radford (Procedural Clerk): That's a no-no, but it's been done. It was done in my committee, in fact, and it's now deemed to be not...
The Chair: Okay.
Mrs. Payne: I'd like to make a comment here, Madam Chair. I held some round-table meetings in my riding last week, in schools generally. In three of the five meetings there was representation from the environmental class there. I got into a discussion about this forum, and I told them there might be a video made available. They were extremely interested in obtaining copies of that.
The Chair: Sure.
Mrs. Payne: I think there's a great deal of interest.
Mr. Radford: Just to deal with that, what can be done is that a copy of the transcripts can be sent to members, and then what members do with that transcript is obviously what members do. What the House does not want us to do is to start fudging or distorting testimony. Then it becomes a question of why him and not me.
The Chair: No, no. The other thing is that we have to go through editing.
Gérard, we had to start because we have to be out of here at twelve.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin (Charlevoix): We have to leave at 12 o'clock?
[English]
The Chair: We're hoping to be under budget for the costs.
Is there no translation?
[Translation]
The Clerk: I can provide some interpretation, Madam Chairman.
[English]
The Chair: Georges, could you translate, s'il vous plaît? Please tell Gérard that we have to be out of here by twelve, so we had to start.
[Translation]
The Clerk: We had just started the meeting and we were talking about the costs of the forum for which a total of $12,000 was budgeted. We spent $6,800 and we have about $5,000 remaining. I think we will come in under the $12,000 allocated for the forum.
[English]
The Chair: You've told him that we should be under budget then? Okay.
We're just discussing the video cassette. We cannot edit a video cassette.
[Translation]
The Clerk: We're talking about the video cassettes. It's impossible for us to edit the tapes. When we get them, we have to leave them as is.
Mr. Asselin: Are all of the proceedings summarized on the same cassette?
The Clerk: No, it's not a summary.
Mr. Asselin: Then there are several cassettes?
The Clerk: Four in all.
[English]
The Chair: I think what we should do, and I'll put it to the committee, is to send a letter to members saying that there is a cassette available.
[Translation]
Mr. Radford: It's not working, Mr. Asselin, but we certainly can provide some simultaneous translation.
Mr. Asselin: Agreed.
[English]
The Chair: We can give them the price of the cassette so that if they would like, they can send it off to different groups in their riding.
[Translation]
The Clerk: We were talking about the price of the cassettes. We could let interested members know what the price will be for the cassettes.
[English]
The Chair: As Norm has suggested, we can send a copy of the transcript to the members as well, so they can decide what they want to use it for. Georges can prepare a letter if that's okay.
.1150
What might the price be for the video cassettes? Do we know yet?
The Clerk: It's about $3.50 per cassette. However, it is common courtesy to give copies free of charge to members who attend, as well as to witnesses. So that cost will be assumed by the committee.
The Chair: Okay.
The Clerk: The only additional cost would be if someone wanted 10 or 20 copies.
The Chair: So we'll make sure that everybody has a copy and a transcript, a full set.
The Clerk: I think there are four or five tapes.
[Translation]
Each member will receive a set of cassettes covering the entire proceedings.
Mr. Asselin: Yes, but what about the witnesses who took part in the forum...
The Clerk: The witnesses will receive cassettes as well. As a rule, as a gesture of courtesy, we send them a tape highlighting their participation, but not the entire set of cassettes.
Mr. Asselin: Not the entire set.
Mr. Radford: I think we should consult with the members and ask them if they want the cassettes. We won't translate them if...
Mr. Asselin: There are 295 members in all.
Mr. Radford: No, I'm talking only about the members who took part in the forum. Of these members, maybe five or six would be interested in receiving the cassettes.
Mr. Asselin: Then all members won't automatically receive copies. I for one would like a copy.
Mr. Radford: You will automatically receive one.
[English]
The Chair: Everyone who attended the conference or the forum, whether they are a member or an outside participant, will get a letter of thank you, a copy of the transcript, and a videotape. Then we should prepare letters to members who did not go with a copy of the transcripts and let them know how much it costs to get a copy of the tapes. If there are four tapes, it's going to be around $15 - or if they want to order them and make them available to the riding.
I don't think a lot of people will do that anyway, but how complicated is that for you?
The Clerk: We assumed that we would write to the 22 members who participated, informing them that the transcript is available on hard copy for them. Diskettes are available as well if they contact our office.
The Chair: So you won't send it out automatically?
The Clerk: For 295, no. Of the 22, you may get up to 10 who would like to have a set, in which case it's a very reasonable thing.
We would thank all the witnesses and would tell them that cassettes are available.
The Chair: Okay. So you won't necessarily send out a video cassette unless they request it.
The Clerk: Not unless they request them, because a lot of them don't want them. Some of them don't have VCRs.
Mrs. Payne: I don't know if any besides me were missing. Would all members of the committee automatically have a video?
The Clerk: If you want that, it can be done. Members of the subcommittee would automatically get a set; that's a given.
[Translation]
Mr. Radford: Plans are to provide cassettes only to the 22 members who participated in the forum, not to all 295 members of the House.
[English]
The Chair: In terms of options regarding the report, we have the complete proceedings, the formal report, and the summary and highlights. Probably we should do the summary and highlights of the forum.
Does that meet with your approval, Gérard? If we do a complete proceeding, it's very expensive, and we don't need to do anything that expensive.
[Translation]
Mr. Radford: How many pages are we talking about?
[English]
The Chair: Under ten. Nothing more. Six to ten pages at the most.
.1155
Mr. Bourdages: It depends also, Madam Chair, on what the final purpose is. Is it only for the people here, or do you want to target also young people? There would be some possibilities that we could try with the Internet, even having nothing on paper.
The Chair: There's another recommendation here. Perhaps we could have a fairly simple summary of something between six and ten pages. Out of that summary, we could do a one-page newsletter sort of thing.
[Translation]
The Clerk: A one-age summary which could be published in environmental journals.
[English]
The Chair: You can distribute this to your riding. We can mail it out to whomever we want to mail it out to, and we can put it on the Internet as well.
But you're going to need a working document anyway. It's easier to go to a summary of ten or six pages and then condense it down from there.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: No problem.
[English]
The Chair: What's the time line? We can't do it in two weeks, can we?
Mr. Bourdages: Everything is possible by working day and night -
The Chair: Yes, I know.
Mr. Bourdages: - especially at this time of year.
The Chair: What can we have in two weeks? Can we have a summary in two weeks, or is that too much? Now we're going to be doing this in October. Does anybody around the table have any bright ideas?
Mr. Bourdages: Do you want to table this formally?
The Chair: We'll have to wait until October to send it out. Is that a problem? Norm?
Mr. Radford: It depends. There are pros and cons. I think you should present something to the House, such as a summary.
The Chair: We should present it to the committee. It would have to go to the committee first.
Mr. Radford: You could go to the House. Committees don't usually send things out without... We're not departments.
The Chair: This all has to go to the committee, and the committee will decide.
Mr. Radford: Yes. There's nothing wrong... Say you were to examine the CEN newsletter, which comes out in the fall. Maybe there's a publication that goes out. It might be nice to piggyback on that and put in one page free of charge.
If you do it before the House rises, you will get it done. A lot of things happen when the House rises.
The Chair: I know.
Mr. Radford: There's the PMO. There's a premiers conference. You may not get much attention.
The value of getting it done now is that it is done, but I don't think it's bad to wait until the fall. But I'm neither the clerk nor the researcher.
Mrs. Payne: There are definite advantages to having it a little earlier than that, but I understand the problems with getting it done earlier. I would like to have this when I'm doing my riding work in the summer because I know there are people who would be keenly interested in seeing it, but I can understand the problems that are inherent in doing that.
Mr. Radford: We can get the diskettes before then.
The Chair: As for the videotape and all that stuff, we'll have it available.
Mrs. Payne: But just the summary...
The Chair: But for the written summary in two weeks, unless you guys want to come back in July as a subcommittee to meet -
Mrs. Payne: Forget what I said, Madam Chair.
The Chair: Here's what I think we should do. I can work informally with the researcher over the summer on the drafting. We'll come back in October. You'll have the video. As soon as we come back in October, we'll take a look at the draft and get it finished. We'll go back to the committee with it, then that's it. Is that okay? So then you'll have some good news for your riding in the fall.
Mr. Radford: The fall is also good because the schools come back. You can send it to the schools. That would be useful.
The Chair: Yes.
[Translation]
Mr. Asselin: In fact, it is better to wait until the fall for the summary.
[English]
The Clerk: It's preferable to have it in the fall.
The Chair: Okay. We can't do it in two weeks. It's not possible.
The meeting is adjourned.