BILI Committee Meeting

    Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the fifteenth meeting of the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament.

    From the agenda that was circulated, you're aware that today we'll be looking at different initiatives of the library, including Parliament 2020, youth engagement initiatives, and a possible international edition of Quorum.

    Appearing today, from the Library of Parliament, we have Sonia L'Heureux, Assistant Parliamentary Librarian; Lynn Brodie, Director, Information and Document Resource Service; and Dianne Brydon, Interim Director General, Learning and Access Services.

    Before we begin, I wish to mention that there's the possibility of a vote. Should one occur, of course, the session here will be interrupted while we go for the vote.

    I'll ask you, witnesses, if you have an opening statement, to present it before answering questions from the committee members.

    Thank you, sir.

    Yes, we do have opening remarks.

    Co-chairs, members of the Committee, I would like to thank you for your invitation to speak with you today. Opportunities to interact with you help the library determine how best to offer products and services that are relevant and useful to parliamentarians. The library welcomes this opportunity to receive input from the Standing Joint Committee members as representatives of all parliamentarians, in particular as it looks to the future to inform how best to meet your evolving needs.

    Together, my colleagues and I strive to keep abreast of the needs and expectations of parliamentarians in order to make the best possible use of the resources afforded to the library to support you today and in the future.

    As assistant parliamentary librarian, I oversee the library's reference and research service.

    I am joined this afternoon by my colleague Dianne Brydon, the director general of learning and access services, who will outline for you our current and potential activities related to youth engagement.

    I am also joined by Lynn Brodie, director general of the information and document resource service, who is responsible for media monitoring services and delivering the news, including Quorum. She can discuss with you the possibilities and issues arising in the production of an international version of Quorum.

    As information providers, we are keenly aware of the tremendous impact the development of new technologies and the advent of social media tools are having on how you access information and engage with citizens. It is no secret that youth are engaging in democracy using different tools and means of communication. To support you in building youth engagement in democracy, it is important that the library better understand your needs and expectations.

    To that end, the library is participating in an international comparative study assessing the knowledge requirements of the Parliament of the future. This initiative, named Parliament 2020, is a collaborative project between Canada and four other national parliamentary libraries and research services from Australia, Chile, New Zealand and the United Kingdom.

    Parliament 2020 is not focused on technology per se. Rather, it seeks to identify how communication technology might support new models for democratic engagement and to identify what the barriers to implementing these might be. It is hoped that this guided visioning exercise will help the library identify a way forward for a digitally enabled Parliament.

    This exercise is meant to help identify practical ideas and a road map for incremental change, focusing on the workings of Parliament, external and internal communications, and public outreach. This information will help the library better support your needs as you engage with citizens, including young people.

    I brought copies of the information sheet that was provided to participants for your information. I believe they're being distributed by the clerks.

    The target date for completion of the Canadian portion of the project is December 2009. All parliamentarians were invited to participate and many have accepted and are currently being interviewed, including members of this Standing Joint Committee. Senior parliamentary officials will be meeting tomorrow and focus groups with young people who are first time voters are planned for early next week.

    The library anticipates being able to share progress on Canada's report with this Committee in the spring of 2010. A final five-country report will be prepared by the Hansard Society in the UK and will be released in the fall of 2010.

    In parallel with Parliament 2020, the library is also active in leading youth engagement initiatives to better understand issues related to democratic engagement of youth in a parliamentary context.

    I will now ask my colleague Dianne Brydon to outline for you the library's current and potential initiative in that respect.

    Dianne.

    Thank you, Sonia.

    I'm delighted to be here.

    Since 1995 the Library of Parliament has had a mandate to deliver parliamentary outreach activities on behalf of Parliament. Because it serves both houses, the library has created a variety of media services and programs to explain the work of Parliament and parliamentarians. The library works closely with the Senate and the House of Commons, as well as other federal and not-for-profit agencies, to identify trends, themes, needs, and gaps that will inform service delivery.

    Several federal agencies deliver programs on a variety of different aspects of citizenship, voter rights and democratic literacy. Along with the Library of Parliament, these include Canadian Heritage, Citizenship and Immigration and Elections Canada. To date, activity has been isolated, with very little consultation or collaboration, which has often resulted in overlaps in some areas, and gaps in others. Since June, the Library of Parliament has chaired a committee of representatives from nine federal agencies with a view to extending the reach of federal activities and avoiding duplication.

    On September 25, 2009, the library convened a dialogue session on youth and democracy. Participants came from federal agencies and non-governmental organizations such as Student Vote Canada, Apathy is Boring and the Historica-Dominion Institute, as well as those conducting research in the field. They are dynamic individuals respected for their expertise and leadership in the domain of youth civic and democratic engagement. The report from that session is included in your briefing binder.

    Participants at the dialogue session identified trends, challenges, and opportunities for engaging youth in democracy, and visualized a way forward.

     As a special note, Robert Barnard from Decode, a company that specializes in youth-related research, presented data that indicated the least engaged are those he defined as “independent youth”. These are the young people who have finished their education but who have not yet married or started a family, and many are still living at home. The number of young Canadians in this group is increasing. He also noted a tendency for public agencies and NGOs involved in youth engagement activities to focus their energies on youth still in school rather than on this growing, least-engaged cohort of young adults.

    Participants in the dialogue session concluded that there are gaps and duplications of effort among their activities and a real dearth of research necessary to address the problem of youth engagement with democracy. They expressed a desire for more communication and collaboration among agencies that encourage young people to engage with democratic institutions, among federal and NGO communities. They called for more and shared research, because we just don't know enough about this, and they suggested the creation of a central locus of activity to communicate research and program activity among the players, coordinate potential collaborations, and maximize the reach of programs.

    They specifically recommended that the Library of Parliament take the lead on this kind of convening role, given that the library is outside of the executive and that it has a mandate for public outreach on behalf of Parliament. The report from the session is also in the binder we distributed.

    Since the dialogue session, we have noted an increase in informal collaboration among participants, but little more. Groups continue to develop initiatives, most of them of excellent quality, but with little connection to each other. There's an expectation among participants that the library will move ahead on the recommendations to make the field more cohesive. Our role to date, because of limited resources, has been more that of a cheerleader, encouraging discussion and making connections.

    We continue to plan our own activities to help young Canadians learn about their democratic system and institutions, how it is relevant to their lives, and how they can get involved. We continue to seek areas of potential collaboration with others involved in this field.

    We keenly await the results of Parliament 2020 — Visioning the Future Parliament. We expect to hear valuable input from parliamentarians and youth regarding how new and emergent technologies can be used to effectively transform the processes of Parliament and its relationship with the public.

    In closing, it is most important that parliamentarians are involved in the discussion to ensure that any democratic engagement activities are planned based on what you're already doing to interact with young constituents, what you want to do, and, most of all, how the library can lay the groundwork to facilitate their interaction with you.

    This joint committee, with representatives from all parties in both houses, is an excellent forum to steer such a discussion. We look forward to working with you to chart the course ahead.

    Merci, Dianne.

    Increasingly, parliamentarians are expressing a need to engage citizens differently. They also tell us they want to access the library products and services differently.

    As the library strives to make the best possible use of its resources, it faces challenges in balancing the various formats and customization that parliamentarians expect for our products.

    I would like to invite my colleague Lynn Brodie to outline some of these challenges for you.

    Lynn.

    Thank you, Sonia.

    Co-chairs, members of the committee, thank you for your invitation to address the committee on the subject of an international edition of Quorum. The library certainly welcomes this opportunity to receive your input as representatives of all parliamentarians.

    As you're well aware, senators and members of Parliament and their staff are keenly interested in the news in all its formats: print, electronic, and broadcast. The library has endeavoured to keep you abreast of the news, with a snapshot of the top stories appearing in Canadian newspapers, in Quorum since 1979. Through the years, with input from parliamentarians, we've increased the regional content, expanded our coverage, improved the currency of the stories by using electronic versions of the papers, and made efforts to deliver this publication to your offices as early as possible.

    It remains, however, a labour-intensive process, taking into account the intellectual effort of the selecting, the production, the printing, and the delivery steps. In 2000 we introduced a scanned or PDF version of the print Quorum, and made it available on your desktop by 9 a.m. If you wish, you can in fact print your own Quorum using that PDF.

    We're very pleased with our most recent improvement to Quorum, which we introduced in October this year, Mobile Quorum. Providing you with a version of Quorum on your PDA, which you could read by 10 a.m., and often as early as 8:30 a.m., was made possible by the introduction of NewsDesk, our new media monitoring service.

    The benefits of NewsDesk are many.

    You can follow issues of interest in over 65 Canadian news sources and six international sources while in your Ottawa office and in your riding or regional office. You can search for specific stories or browse through the popular topics we have highlighted. You can create alerts for worry-free and timely delivery of content on specific issues of concern. You can save time by browsing the topical categories set up by the library's staff to monitor “hot“ issues of the day. You can make use of RSS feeds to stay abreast of news generated by and about Parliament. You can view the full text of articles using your Blackberry and you can view selected daily and archived news clippings from 56 government departments and agencies.

    NewsDesk is a powerful, up-to-date, and convenient source of news for members and their staff. The six international sources included in the Library of Parliament's subscription to NewsDesk include Le Monde, Le Monde diplomatique, L'Express, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and the London Daily Telegraph. These sources were chosen based on their representativeness and cost. The cost for additional sources is significant, in part because the library includes the right to redistribute the content electronically to our parliamentary clients.

    You received a briefing note, “International Media-Monitoring Services: Perspectives Beyond our Borders”, following your September 17 meeting. I'd like to now update the members of the committee on actions the library has taken since then.

    To expand access to international news sources, the library has increased the number of licenses to Library PressDisplay that it purchases to 15 users from the previous five concurrent users. The cost for this was $15,000. Library PressDisplay is a service supplying 1,2000 sources from 90 countries, it is fully searchable and stories are presented in a manner that maintains the original appearance and language of the newspaper.

     We're in the process of negotiating a subscription to the BBC Monitoring Library as well, which provides articles selected from traditional and new media worldwide, with over a hundred source languages being translated into English to provide a fully searchable current affairs resource. More than 3,000 radio, television, press, Internet, and news agency sources in over 150 countries inform this source of economic and political material.

    The library has offered English- and French-language training sessions to members and their staff on making better use of electronic resources, specifically on international news sources on November 13, and on general sources providing an international perspective on November 27. We would be happy to offer additional opportunities to members and staff on the Hill to attend these sessions early in the new year.

    I should add that the library has subscriptions to an extensive grouping of international sources, which our staff can and do search on your behalf.

    Customized news filtering is a resource-intensive activity to which the library is continuing to devote considerable resources, while operating within significant budgetary constraints. Keeping this in mind, I asked my staff to build on the experience they recently gained developing the mobile Quorum in NewsDesk to create for you a Mobile International Quorum. I am most pleased to share these mock-ups with you today to obtain your feedback.

    In your kits you'll find some pages that are screenshots of NewsDesk, showing in the first instance--I guess I can call it a dummy category, or a mocked-up category--an international Quorum. It's highlighted by the red box.

    If you select that, you are presented with the next page, which shows you all the stories that my staff selected—on Tuesday of this week, I believe—and you can then choose those stories. You can also choose the PDF button at the top of the page, which is on your third screenshot. It will not only give you the stories themselves but will also provide for you the table of contents shown on the fourth page. So in fact it provides for you a table of contents and all of the selected stories from our six sources.

    You also received in your kits a prototype of Quorum. I have to warn you that the cover is just an addition; it's not something you would receive if you chose to PDF the selection. What you would in fact receive is the table of contents, followed by the 26 or 27 stories that appear in it. This just gives you a sense of what the content might be.

    We think there are important advantages to this option of using NewsDesk. We can produce this mobile international Quorum within our existing resources, depending of course on the number of newspapers that are contained. Depending on the number of sources browsed, it would be compiled more than once a week. The contents would be timely, because we receive the feeds on the date of publication. The experienced editors of Quorum would be seized of the international issues appearing in the Canadian press and be able to identify international press stories on these issues more rapidly. You would benefit from all the advantages that NewsDesk offers. You would have the option of printing the full selection of articles found in international Quorum or just those that are of particular interest to you.

    If you'd like the library to pursue this mobile international Quorum, we'd be pleased to obtain your input and feedback through appropriate means, such as interviews, focus groups, and short electronic surveys, for example. We really need your input to make sure that the selection criteria used to identify key stories from this international content meet your needs. We need to know whether you're looking for breaking news from the international perspective or looking for in-depth analytic pieces. It's really important for us to define those selection criteria. Are they stories in the foreign press that impact Canada and/or those that mention Canada and Canadians in the international press?

    Those are only the starting points for the selection.

    Media monitoring has evolved over the last 30 years largely based on the greater ease of obtaining access to an ever increasing number of media sources in electronic format. The library recognizes your significant ongoing interest in news coverage and has committed to developing enhanced media services under the umbrella of a Parliamentary Newsroom.

    The newsroom concept envisions a collection of media sources in a variety of formats, organized to meet your needs, available around the clock, that delivers news offerings in a way that saves you time. Ideally, the contents would be searchable, the results customizable to individual client preferences and requirements. NewsDesk, launched October 1, 2009, is the first component of the Parliamentary Newsroom. In order to acquire more international content, additional funding would be required. We have increased access to Library PressDisplay and are seeking other sources of international content to fill out the Parliamentary Newsroom. We are looking at possible partnerships with departments to enhance our options and keep our costs down while keeping redistribution license issues in mind.

    I'd be happy to take your questions, as would my colleagues, and to clarify any of these comments.

    Thank you.

    Thank you very much for your presentation.

    We'll begin questioning now with Senator Jaffer.

    Thank you very much.

    I first want to commend you on the courses you have started providing. I can tell you that my staff and I are really appreciating them. If I have a comment on it, it's that I always find, the minute I get there, that I'm too late, and I'm always on waiting lists. Obviously the demand is great, so I commend you. The last one, on setting out the international sources, was very useful for my office. Thank you so much.

    I want to ask you a question on the youth. What kind of reach are you making? Are you looking at youth only from the Ottawa-Toronto-Montreal triangle, or are you reaching out? What kinds of efforts are you making to reach out to the representation of Canada, the different youth who form our great country? I'd like to hear about that.

    We always aspire to reach out across the country. One of my informal operating principles is that we don't do anything that is available only to people locally and that we can't also offer in some means to the rest of the people across the country.

    What we're doing in targeting youth right now—I think a little more is said in the detailed explanation of our outreach activities—is really focused at teachers. For the last ten years we've had the Teachers Institute on Canadian Parliamentary Democracy. We've focused on creating materials for them to teach about Parliament in the classroom, because we figure the reach is going to be more long-term and sustained. They can teach year after year and will in the end have an impact on a greater number of students. That has been our focus in the past.

    We also focus on youth programs that bring young people to Parliament. The guide program, for instance, brings 40 university students from across the country every year to have an experience in Parliament. We're very focused on making sure that it is a pan-Canadian opportunity.

    We have an intern program that brings four interns to Parliament for a year's experience working side by side with analysts, and they are selected from across the country. But up to this point, with our limited resources we have not been able to do a sustained or focused outreach to youth themselves; we have chosen to focus through the teachers. What we're looking at now is getting the feedback on the 2020 imitative from you, to find out how we can best do it—do it electronically, improve the website, which will take a lot of work and significant money.

    We are looking at the materials we produce. For How Canadians Govern Themselves, the Eugene Forsey booklet that is one of the most popular things we have, we're creating an interactive version, so that young people will be more excited possibly about Parliament and how legislation comes to pass.

    Most importantly, what we're going to be doing is focus, in all of our products, more on the relevance of Parliament in their lives, so that they have an understanding of all the ways that Parliament can affect them, as they are right now and going forward in their lives.

    So that's how I could answer that.

    May I suggest you do electronically, of course, and even through our offices, because all of us all across the country work with different youth; it may be one other way to use. At least let us know, and then we can let others know. Any time I see anything that you send, I send it to all kinds of people, hoping that they will look at it.

    That would be great.

    The other thing I should mention is that we're increasingly trying to work together with other activities and other federal agencies, as well as NGOs, so we can see the excellent things they're doing and try to pull them together. That's really the challenge: how to find out all that's out there and make sure we're offering all of this in a cohesive way, so that what Parliament's doing isn't duplicating what somebody else is doing that we can build with them. And because everybody has their own way of reaching youth, we will maximize the reach we have.

    I would also like to say that Parliament 2020 is going to be very helpful in helping us find out from you what you are currently doing to reach out to youth and how we can build on that.

    Thank you.

     On the international forum, I have to tell you I'm so excited. It's a great idea that Mauril had, that we should really look at this. My only comment is that I know we have to start somewhere, and maybe we will look at these journals and then look at others, but it's not representative of the world today with the journals you are looking at. So I would be very anxious if that's all you would look at, because it's, again, getting the same kind of news we get here from the local Quorum. We need to go, for example, to Chinese, Indian, and other international papers besides the ones you've looked at.

    I'm sure you've thought it, but you just have to start somewhere. I suggest we look at it earlier than later.

    Yes, I appreciate your comment, and I fully agree with you that it's a very limited set of sources, with just six of them. In fact, only four of them are dailies; the other two are, in fact, either weekly or monthly news magazines.

    The difficulty, of course, is the cost and the desire to redistribute the electronic format. On average, the cost is about $11,000 to $25,000 per title to add them to a source like NewsDesk, which is why we've been looking at the other options like the Library Press Display and the BBC Monitoring LIbrary, which really covers many languages and sources from around the world. It's a matter of how we present it to you and make it acceptable.

     We think the parliamentary newsroom that we'd like to work on in the coming year would provide such a solution. At least you'd be able to go to one place to get all of the news, whether it's Canadian or whether it's international and broader. But for the moment, this is what we had available.

     Thank you very much, Senator.

    Ms. Bennett.

    Thank you very much.

    Just to follow up on my colleague's question, a lot of what we're interested in is when global journals are talking about Canada. I want to know if there is a less expensive way of just searching for Canada and being able to let us know that this week The Economist or the Guardian is saying something. I just think that, particularly even over this past summer in terms of our Canadian health care system's being criticized in the States, somehow just having a way of searching for that and letting us, as parliamentarians, know what people in the rest of the world are saying about Canada would be probably at the top of our list.

    That's just to feed into the considerations.

    Right.

    I didn't mention one of our other products, called Radar, which does exactly that for magazines such as The Economist and the Guardian. Anytime Canada is mentioned, or there stories that are of interest to Canada, or something that's being discussed in Parliament here but mentioned in the foreign magazines or periodicals, it would be included in Radar.

    I think it's a matter for us to find ways to try to pull them all together.

    I guess on the question of outreach or putting the public back into Parliament, one of our favourite exercises was the disability committee, when we were able to do online consultation with persons with disabilities from across the country. The committee had its own website. The members got to choose the questions. The members put up three tools: the poll results, the tell-us-your-story, the present-your-solutions. We then were able to meet all kinds of people online who wouldn't be traditional witnesses to a parliamentary committee and then bring them back to vet our draft report.

    I want to know what resources you would need. I know it was a collaboration between the House and...I think it was done in the Senate as well, with Senator Kirby.

    What would it take for us to be able to do that? For example, as we come toward a law on copyright, I think the kids are interested in copyright. What would it take, or what kind of additional resources would you need in the library, to be able to make sure that the committee examining copyright legislation could be consulting online with young people while they were looking at the bill? Certainly on my MSN chat on Sunday nights a lot of them actually have very good solutions, not just problems.

    I want to know why we haven't done that again. Is it a matter of resources? How can we, as a committee, get you the resources to do it?

    Part of the objective of Parliament 2020 is to answer some of these questions. We understand that a number of parliamentarians want to do things differently, and we also understand that young people want to communicate or interact with you differently from maybe some previous generations.

    One step, then, is to understand these things. Interestingly, preliminary results from the U.K. show that parliamentarians' senior staff and young people are not on the same page, so finding out what this means is important to us.

    What we are also doing is this. Under the leadership of the Clerk of the Senate, the Clerk of the House, and the parliamentary librarian, there is a parliamentary information management committee, PIM. The objective is to get the three administrations to work together to find out how to manage our information, how to work together to help you.

    For example, my colleague Dianne is on that committee, and we would like to get these people to brainstorm ideas on how we move forward making every dollar count. Every administration has to be mindful of how it uses dollars, and there is no point in duplicating services in too many places if we can work better at it together.

    For example, you are raising the issue of committee. When it comes to a committee, there is more than one administration involved. Sometimes it is an issue that really belong to the committee. Sometimes it is an infrastructure issue that allows us to support the committee.

     Those are the kinds of issues we would have to work out based on what you are asking for. The PIM committee would help us to move the yardstick on it.

    Thank you, Ms. Bennett. If you'd like, we can put you on a further rotation.

    That would be great.

    Senator Lapointe, please.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    I would simply like to make a comment. In fact, I am filled with gratitude towards the library for all of the information it supplied and all of the research work it did in the context of my video lottery project. You provided us with studies that had been done on this matter. Your work was absolutely marvellous. I wish to tell you once again that I am most grateful. My project has reached committee stage and I do not know if it will come to fruition before my departure from the Senate, which will take place on December 6, 2010. I wished to sincerely thank you for all of the efforts you have made in assisting us with our research work on video lotteries.

    Thank you, Senator, for that comment.

    We'll move on to the next questioner, please.

    Mr. Poilievre.

    One of the challenges I find when I'm away from the office is gaining good access to international news sources. You can easily get basic news through websites like cnn.com, through the BBC website, through foxnews.com, through The Times of London. All these papers have, generally, basic news. If you want more in-depth analysis, the kind you would find on, say, The New York Times editorial page or The Wall Street Journal editorial page, you often have to be a subscriber.

    I'm wondering if there's a way MPs could gain access to more of this international news literature without having to e-mail the library and wait—for example, if it's a Friday night and you're commenting on something for a Sunday morning talk show—till Monday to get access to some of the articles and analysis that's available. I'm just wondering if there's a way there could be a common subscription or a corporate subscription of some kind that would give us access to all of the most advanced opinion and thinking that goes on in the great publications of the world.

    As you mentioned, it generally does require a subscription, and at this time we have subscriptions to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Daily Telegraph from London. Those are fairly serious newspapers with, as you say, analytic pieces on their editorial pages, and you have access to those now.

    Do you mean members can access them remotely and so on?

    Yes.

    In your information package today, you have some of the screenshots from NewsDesk, which is available to you under news and current affairs on IntraParl, and it's available to you on your BlackBerry. There are instructions for signing on, so you can use your BlackBerry wherever you are to go in and see if The New York Times, The Washington Post, or the London paper have any editorial pieces that are of interest to you, or if we have identified any of their stories under particular topics, which are located on NewsDesk as well.

    I know in your case the riding office is local, but for those of you who have offices outside of the Ottawa area, it's also available to your staff in the riding offices. If there's any training required, we're more than happy to either coach in your office or to set alerts up for you and to invite you to training sessions.

    You mentioned from a constituency office and parliamentary office, but what about remote from both of those?

    Yes, if you have the VPN access on a computer.

    That's this small device they sent off with us.

    Yes, I believe so.

    So you'd have to get into the IntraParl system. Is that how it works?

    Or you can use your BlackBerry. Your BlackBerry will also do it.

    Okay. That's good to know.

    Is there any thinking about expanding from those three publications to additional ones? For example, typically if someone wants a balanced view of the elite opinion in the United States, one would read, say, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. Would you consider expanding at least to the journal?

    We'd consider expanding. The issue is that we'd like some feedback from you in terms of the types of newspapers that are of interest. It's very useful for you to actually suggest this morning that it's more the analytic pieces that are of interest rather than the breaking news, but we do need to have some consultative exercises to really scope out which newspapers. As I indicated, they're actually quite expensive to obtain subscriptions to, especially subscriptions to feeds that can be searched and can be redistributed.

    To conclude, if you're doing consultation, my contribution is that The Wall Street Journal would be a great addition.

    Thank you.

    Thank you very much.

    Mr. Trost.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    Mr. Poilievre covered most of my questions. I have more of a personal curiosity question.

    I'm assuming, as would be very natural, that English and French would be the dominant-language news sources. But some of us do read in other languages. Often you get better, more in-depth analytical pieces when you go into a native tongue.

     For instance, it was driving me nuts trying to get some decent coverage on the German election in anything English or French. My German is not fluent, but I can read it.

    What sort of access do our offices have to daily or regular news sources for things like Der Spiegel or other sources? In my case it's German, but I'm sure other members would have other interests in other ways.

    In fact, through Library PressDisplay, you have access to something like 1,200 newspapers in their native language, with the appearance that they would have as a newspaper. You will see the headlines, the mastheads, and all of the articles. And they are searchable.

    How are they selected? Are they more or less the 1,200 most common Internet-accessible ones? What tend to be the criteria?

    Library PressDisplay is a commercial service. They've obviously negotiated with these 1,200 newspapers, and they do keep adding them. In fact, they've added about 250 in the last two months. They're continuing to grow their number of sources, and I'm sorry, I don't have an exact definition of how they do that.

    It includes the really large newspapers from around the world. I think it's something like 150 languages, or in fact more than that.

    I don't speak that many, so I'll take your word for it.

    Thank you.

    Thank you, Mr. Trost.

    Ms. Hughes, please.

    Thank you.

    I have a question for Ms. Brydon. You said that your resources are limited. What size budget do you require? How much money would you need in order to pursue your work?

    The public awareness portion represents approximately 8% of the library's budget. The activities targeting youth account for about 4% of our budget.

    We have to think about how that's just of the library's budget. We're doing it on behalf of Parliament, so when we're thinking about the House of Commons and the Senate budget as well--they have a page program in each house, but the outreach to the public is done by the library--it's a very small amount that Parliament is expending. In full dollar figures, that's about $1.4 million on youth. That includes the guide program, as I mentioned, which is about $900,000.

    So really, it's $500,000 that we're spending on teacher programs, helping teachers teach, and other outreach to youth. It's not really very much.

    How much money do you think you need?

    That would be very difficult to say until we had an idea of how big we would go.

    I can't give you an approximate amount until I know what you're already doing, what others are doing, and what we might want to go ahead with. We don't even have the resources to actually do the research on how we might want to get there, so it would be hard to say. It would probably be a few more million, because IT is expensive to do, and we would want to be doing outreach to all of the public as well.

    What young people will tell us in the context of the Parliament 2020 initiative will inform us as to the way they want to be included in the conversations regarding the relationship with Parliament. That dimension of the problem is unknown, but this would help us determine the way forward. At present, we lack information.

    Have you made requests to secondary schools with regard to citizenship education courses, in order to determine which types of tools they could use? Is there something missing?

    For all of our programs and products, we consult teachers on a regular basis to find out what they need and what is effective. We ask them, after we issue it, is it working, and what can we give you that will do more?

    We want to make sure that we're not duplicating what other people are doing, that we're being collaborative and making sure that the taxpayers' money is being well spent.

    The real focus is not so much on the schools, because I think we're doing pretty well on the schools. It's how to reach young people beyond the classroom--the folks who aren't engaging, the 18- to 24-years-olds who have graduated from school.

    I think maybe in that respect, we're seeing more and more schools finally getting into the fact that they're talking about Parliament. It's something that I do on a regular basis if I can get into a high school, or even an elementary school. During elections debates I make sure that we are part of that, so I think this is great.

    I noticed that the document talks about voter turnout being at an unprecedented low. I'm just wondering if you happen to have a percentage as to where we were and where we are.

    It's a good question. I can tell you that 35% of Canadian youth voted, compared with 55% of the general population. I don't know how that rate compares with those in other countries. It's fairly consistent; I know the International Parliamentary Union at their fall meeting also discussed this issue. Some of you may have attended that meeting. They are coming out with a report talking about the issue worldwide. This is something that clearly is affecting people around the world.

    Also, when we look at the reasons why people are showing up in low numbers, research done concerning young people shows that it's because of lower levels of political interest, lower levels of political knowledge, being less likely to see voting as a duty, and being less likely to be contacted by parties or candidates because a lot of them are at university or may not necessarily be living in a place where you, when you're out contacting, can get hold of them easily.

    What we're trying to do is address that first part, about low knowledge of politics. We're working with secondary students, but we're also trying to figure out how we can help people understand more.

    Going back to Ms. Bennett's comment, in which she was talking about the fact that they interact, first of all we have to make them aware of how they can interact. They have to understand how Parliament works and where it can be effective. That's the role we can play, working with others such as Student Vote Canada and Apathy Is Boring, to get out there on the ground and work with all of you, who are also out there across the country, to see how we can get that knowledge translated into action.

    Thank you, Ms. Hughes. If you'd like another question, would you like to be put down on the rotation?

    Yes. Thanks.

    Madam Guay.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Your projects are very interesting, and the international version of Quorum is as well. At present, we receive Quorum every day. Will we be receiving the international version of Quorum every day? Is that a possibility? Will we be getting it once a week? How is this going to work?

    We are at the stage where we must gather more information regarding your needs. This will be greatly dependent upon the resources involved. It will depend on your interest and on the library's capability. I am today unable to determine the frequency with which we will be able...

    You are however able to see that there certainly is interest. International news is becoming more and more important for us. We are all critics for certain areas. I am the critic for Francophonie issues. I am therefore interested in a good many international newspapers. If this idea succeeds, it will be extremely worthwhile for us. We would have to practically receive this daily, as is the case today with Quorum. I do however know that there are costs attached to this. Do you have an idea of your needs, in order for us to have a better picture?

    I will be basing my answer on the costs we are already familiar with, for the papers that we purchase. If we were to add between six and eight international papers, that would represent approximately $135,000 to $150,000.

    These costs are not extravagant.

    They are perhaps not extravagant, but it is nevertheless a sizeable amount of money in the context of the library's budget.

    I am aware that these would be additional costs. How many people work on Quorum?

    Four at present.

    How many more would be required?

    There would have to be at least one additional person.

    There would be a requirement for one additional person.

    We believe that one person...

    You would then be able to do the work. Are we going to continue to receive this document in hard copy, or by e-mail?

    This is part of the discussion regarding your needs. I would like to know what your needs are.

    When we are in the House, it is easy. We ask one of the pages to bring us a copy of Quorum and it is done. We do not always have access to our computers and not everyone enjoys doing this work on their computer.

    Obviously, it is not everyone who enjoys reading an article or other on a BlackBerry.

    It is a generational thing. There are those who are very partial to their BlackBerry, but such is not the case for everyone. It would be a good idea to have it in hard copy, that it be distributed and that we be able to ask a page to bring it to us or else pick it up at the library if need be.

    If we are to produce a paper version, we must also discuss the printing and distribution costs with the officials of the House of Commons and of the Senate.

    You could also limit the number of copies. You would not necessarily have to print a copy for each MP.

    We distribute approximately 1,100 copies of Quorum every day.

    What are the costs attached to that?

    For printing alone, the cost is $170 a day.

    Very well. Do you print on both sides of the pages?

    Yes, but that cost does not include distribution nor layout. Someone else takes care of that.

    Very well.

    A little earlier, you talked about doing much more work with young people aged 18 to 24.

    I would tell you, most sincerely, that if the parents do not go out and vote, their children will not. There is education to be done not only with young people but also with their parents. That is my impression.

    I believe that we must also open the doors of Parliament to young people. I often get groups of young people to come in order for them to see Parliament at work, to see how a committee works and how things work on Parliament Hill. They leave here with some knowledge, but there is no real follow-up afterwards. We therefore must find a tool for there to be follow-up, be it electronic or through some Web site. Our young people are very connected.

    Perhaps the young people will get their parents to vote, who knows. We will see. Some form of follow-up after a visit to Parliament could be worthwhile. We could find other means, because we are not just limited to visits.

    We are often invited to go to cegeps and schools. We would therefore have a tool we could give them in order for them to communicate, to see what goes on and to follow politics.

    I congratulate you on your work and I hope that we will be able to have additional tools, in order to do our work.

    Thank you.

    Thank you, Madam Guay.

    We'll move on now to Monsieur Bélanger.

    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

    Is this the very first edition?

    No, as I indicated, you must not look at it too closely.

    Is it the first edition?

    No, it is a one-off.

    Indeed, but there has been no other. If we keep it, in 100 years' time, it will be worth a lot of money.

    I have a few questions. You said that you are negotiating with the BBC to have access to its network or its library. What kind of money are we talking about here?

    In fact, we are not having discussions directly with the BBC, but rather with the company acting as a seller or a supplier of data from the British Broadcasting Corporation. It would be about 10,000.

    Would that give us access to everything they have?

    That would give us access to a selection of financial and political articles.

    Very well.

    Is there a French equivalent?

    Not with the BBC.

    I am not talking about the BBC, but there must be something in France, like France 2 or something similar.

    To date, we have found nothing that translates articles into French or that offers a product similar to that of the BBC, apart from Library PressDisplay, that offers German newspapers in German and French newspapers in French. The problem is that there is a variety of potentially available options.

    I believe that French television is attempting to set up an equivalent of the BBC. If it does not yet exist, it will certainly one day come up with a media service similar to the BBC Monitoring Library. I imagine that you are following this.

    Yes, we are indeed following it.

    Could you tell me how many MPs and Senators or users — I do not know if you have statistics on that — have used the Mobile Quorum? Does it have the same name in French?

    Yes, that is it, more or less. No, I do not have those numbers because the service was only launched on October 1^st...

    Are there any?

    I imagine there are.

    You do not know, and I must admit that I do not have it. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I did not even know that it was available on my little device.

    I am happy to see that we were able to provide you today with new information.

    I think the time has come for me to go back and see you in order to get a briefing on all of the available services.

    I could certainly ask my staff to call you and set up a little session in order for you to subscribe.

    Do you know how many there are?

    It is too early.

    Very well.

    In your opinion, when will the international Mobile Quorum be available?

    We are still working out the kinks with NewsDesk. We must also go through the shutdown phase for ParlMedia, a service that has been in place for more than 10 years. We are hoping to do that during the month of January. We are working both on ParlMedia and on NewsDesk.

    Now I understand. I was looking for NewsDesk, and I could not find it. At the present time, it is ParlMedia.

    No, NewsDesk is already available through Intraparl.

    I am going to have to go and see you soon, because I have been unable to find it.

    In Quorum, that you print every day...

    This is a printed example, to give you...

    Would it be possible to append to the present version of Quorum the table of contents of the international version of Quorum? Is the international version searchable? If we look at the table of contents, we will see what is available. Is that a possibility?

    I think that that comes back somewhat to my comment: we need to communicate with you, with parliamentarians, in order to know what your ideas are and what the possibilities might be.

    If you do that, you will get reactions, suggestions and feedback. For my part, I would be especially interested in in-depth articles. As a matter of fact, others have already mentioned that. We hear about breaking news in one way or another. If it is not through the media, it is through our constituents, who call us. If you added the table of contents to the version of Quorum we get today, in my opinion, you would get reactions from parliamentarians. One page would not change things very much, whether it is added at the beginning or at the end.

    That is one idea, and I would like...

    Thank you, Mr. Bélanger.

    If you'd like to continue your questioning, would you perhaps like to be added to the list?

    I do not like being interrupted right in the middle of a sentence. I will be wanting to continue, Mr. Chairman.

    Thank you.

    Mr. Boughen.

    Thank you, Mr. Chair.

    This is a question concerning how much your traffic has changed with the advent of the computer, with computers now in schools and in almost every home in the country. Have you found an increase due to computers being out there, or a decrease; or has it changed your operation to any extent?

    The way it tracks the usage is different. There's a difference between hits and visits and how long people are staying. I don't have those numbers with me, but I can certainly get you that information.

    The biggest thing is building the awareness and helping people find our site and, having found the site, things that resonate with them. That's one of the things we're doing and why we're trying to make it more interactive, a little more interesting for young people to engage.

    There are some other people who are dallying with social media, getting into YouTube and Twitter, etc. That's something we have to be very careful about and make sure deals with you. What we're trying to do is help people understand how it works and then interact with you with regard to feelings around different policies, because that's not what our role is. We're trying to facilitate interaction with Parliament and with you as individual parliamentarians.

    So it's building the awareness that things are there and of how they would get to it.

    Is the frequency of requests for information that would normally happen, if the computers weren't there, about the same, or has it slowed down?

    The number of written requests has gone way down, for sure, and the number of e-mails has gone way up. I wouldn't know about how the number of phone calls has been affected.

    This is anecdotal; we could come back with harder numbers. What I'm hearing from our people who take the requests is that more and more we get it through electronic means, less on the phone. So we do notice a change.

    Thank you.

    I think I can add just a bit to that.

    Yes, we are finding that more and more of our clients are looking for their own information on the parliamentary Intranet site. We're doing our best to provide as many electronic resources as we can on the site. In fact, almost half of our collection expenditures now are for electronic material, which we make available for the most part directly to you.

    Thank you very much.

    Senator, do you have a comment?

    I have some questions, actually. Maybe they've been answered. I'm sorry I wasn't here before, but duty was calling elsewhere.

    I took a quick look at this. I think the concept of an international Quorum is wonderful. But I would like to see an international Quorum that puts more emphasis on what international media are saying about Canada. Almost all of the articles in this one—and I realize this was put together as much for show and tell as anything else—are stories about Obama and what's happening with the health care system there, which I'm reading in local media anyway.

    My desire for such an instrument would be to learn what the Chinese are saying about Canada, what the French are saying about Canada, what the Latin Americans are saying about Canada. I don't know if that was raised by anybody else, but that's what I would like to see more emphasis placed on.

    Unfortunately, we were only looking at basically one day's worth of data from four or five newspapers, and that was one of the requirements I put to my staff: to try to find anything where Canada or Canadians were mentioned. It was pretty slim pickings that day.

    Thank you, Senator.

    Ms. Bennett.

    I just wanted to go forward in terms of this visioning exercise. I think we were pleased, at the C2D2 conference in Vancouver a year or so ago, to hear from the parliamentary librarians of Chile and Great Britain, and we were quite inspired by some of their ideas and what they've been able to do. Pullinger in Great Britain has been able to send a sort of “Coles Notes” of how they work to every young person on their birthday when they reach voting age. We thought Soledad Ferreiro was spectacular on what the library put together by hiring actors to do a sort of water-cooler conversation about what this bill would mean in a completely non-partisan way.

    I guess in a visioning exercise for the library—obviously seeking what parliamentarians need and what would help our citizens better understand what we do here and the questions before us—are there other things you would like to do if you had the resources? I think that a lot of what you have said today is based on not having the resources to do more, and I think that's what this committee is for--to help you fight for the resources you need to serve us in our job as parliamentarians and that two-way accountability that is with our citizens as well.

    Is there a whole menu of things you'd like to be doing if you had the resources? How can we help you decide what should percolate to the top of the list and let us fight for the money?

    I look longingly at what the U.K. is doing. Every day I look longingly at what the U.K. is doing.

    The way the U.K. moved ahead was as a result of a parliamentary committee that said there was an issue with political engagement with Parliament. It had a set of hearings, it did a study, it did a report, and then it asked the administration—it presented what the problems were, asked them to come forward with some answers, and gave them a year. They came forward with a proposal, and that's how they moved ahead.

    I believe it only was effective because parliamentarians became seized with the issue and went and found out what the issue was, what the challenges were, and then the administration responded.

    We can come forward with options for you, and I'm happy to do it. We can come forward with the Vespa to the Cadillac versions. But I really think it's a matter of starting with Parliament 2020 and talking with you about what you need and how you see engaging with the public, listening to young people through this exercise. As I said in my remarks, this is a perfect representation of Parliament in this committee. It's possible that maybe you would like to look into this a little bit more and give us some guidance on where you would like to go.

    The sky is the limit. We could do anything. We could start very small immediately. We already have young people coming from across the country to Ottawa through Encounters with Canada, for instance. Right now they get a briefing from a member of Parliament. We could turn that into a simulation—a simulation of a committee—and make it a whole lot more interesting and relevant to them. That would take a relatively little amount of work and increase in funding. Or we could go full bore with mock Parliaments on-site, or taking them out across the country, as they do in the U.K. That is more expensive and would involve a little bit more work and thought.

    Anything is possible. If I were to say what you can help us with, it's really to help us develop the options and to help us move ahead on what you as parliamentarians, on behalf of Parliament, think we should be doing.

     Thank you, Ms. Bennett.

    We'll move on to Senator Greene.

    I'd like to ask how you intend to consult with parliamentarians on what their needs are. I think we all have different needs. I've heard some people around the table comment that they want to be able to read or access articles written about Canada by other people. I myself couldn't care less what other people think about us or whether they praise us or criticize us. What I'd like to read, perhaps, just as an example, is some article written by an analyst of China about their investments in Africa or South America. That's the kind of thing I'd be interested in.

    I'm wondering how you intend to consult with all of us to make sure we all understand what's available, and on what we might want.

    I think the best way to consult you is probably through some interviews directly with yourselves, or possibly some focus groups with your staff.

    One of the simplest ways we have had some success with is to actually tack on electronic surveys, so that when you sign on to NewsDesk, you're asked whether you would mind taking a couple of minutes to answer this survey, and if not, just press this button. It gives us the opportunity to ask you some targeted questions.

    I'm hearing there's an interest in analytical stories, but in some cases about Canada, and in other cases really focused on what's going on in other countries and how they see those situations or their legislation. So there's a real mix, and for us it's going to require some additional input. I think there are a couple of ways for us to get that.

    Thank you very much.

    Ms. Hughes.

    Some of the questions have actually been answered.

    Just to follow up on that, I think there's probably a lot of requests that we can make. I guess it would be, as a whole, what is the percentage that would actually be used? That's how you determine what you should actually put out. We can't negate the fact that we still have the opportunity to get the information through a request through the parliamentary library.

    First of all, Mauril touched on the fact that he didn't even know this was on the BlackBerry; neither did I. I'm wondering whether we should be looking at a couple of information sessions on how we as parliamentarians can actually better access resources. Basically, we would learn how to access the information easily from the library through navigating, or maybe things are being asked of the library that are so easy for us to get that it would remove that level of burden on you. How to make the best use of the resources may also be important. We've seen quite a turnover in Parliament in the last few elections, so I think it may be wise to do something like that.

    Again, this touches on Senator Stephen Greene's comments; through the changes that the Library of Parliament committee is putting forward, aside from that, to have other questions asked to members of Parliament, I think the survey is a good thing. It's important to ask them, but again, we need to come back here to decipher what the percentage was of people who actually wanted those items put in. Otherwise, we would end up with an international Quorum this high.

    Yes. I think it's important for us to actually survey you to find out more what your needs are, how you use it, and then come back to this committee with some kind of a report saying this is what we've found, do you support it, and move forward that way.

    Don't feel bad about not having it on your BlackBerry. It really only has been two months since we've made it available. As I say, we're more than happy to go into your office if you want some individual help, because we realize you're quite busy and unable to always attend the sessions or seminars when they're offered.

    Mrs. Carol Hughes: So you do offer them?

    Ms. Lynn Brodie: Yes. There have been regular seminars throughout the end of September into October and November. We'll continue those, obviously, in January.

    As well, once accessibility to the programming related to youth is more in place, it's a matter of how—and maybe these would be suggestions from you—we maximize getting that information out. We can do it through our ten percenters and our householders, but there may be other ways as well to make sure that we get those links directly to the schools somehow.

    That's it for me. Thanks.

    Thank you, Ms. Hughes.

    Mr. Bélanger.

    My colleague Madam Jaffer is a little generous in treating me as the originator of the idea of this international Quorum. I don't believe I was. I think there may be others around the table, such as my colleague Madam Bennett, who perhaps have better claim to that than I have.

    What I have done is harass the library for over a year, a year and a half now, to make sure it starts happening. That's where I was headed.

    I'm okay with this concept of serving the membership of the House and the Senate so that you don't have an international Quorum that will never be read and will cost too much to print, if we're going to go that route.

    Do you have a schedule of when you expect to have this done? When do you expect to have a good sense of what parliamentarians would like, of whether or not you can achieve it, and of when you are going to actually put it into execution and make it happen? I'd like to know whether you have that schedule or not.

    I don't have an exact schedule in mind. Right now, the schedule is to move from the ParlMedia to a NewsDesk application to take care of any of the bugs and become much more comfortable with it. Following that, if you support the idea of surveying members and senators, it could probably be done in 2010, with a report back—

    Whoa, wait. I'm sorry; when in 2010?

    Early.

    Will it be in the first quarter of 2010?

    Possibly it will be the first quarter, and certainly the first half.

    Could we expect in this committee in the first quarter of fiscal 2010-11—that is, in either April, May, or June—to have a report and your conclusions and recommendations as to how you intend to proceed? Is that feasible?

    With your support, yes, it would be—support in terms of participating and providing the feedback and so on.

    All right. What support would you need?

    It would be support to respond to questions from us, requests for interviews, support for your staff to participate in focus groups—that kind of thing.

    Sure. But you're not talking just about me, I presume.

    Voices: Oh, oh!

    Ms. Lynn Brodie: I'm talking to the group.

    Hon. Mauril Bélanger: Does everyone else around this table offer the same cooperation?

     Does anybody not offer it?

    Then there you have it. Away you go.

    Thank you.

    Thank you, Mr. Bélanger.

    That concludes the list of questioners that I have, so perhaps I could ask a question or two myself.

    It would appear that one of the limiting factors here is the subscription rates. You mentioned $11,000 to $25,000. Is that a range, or is it a range per paper? Is it a one-time rate or is it an annual rate? I would think that would add up pretty quickly.

    Could you explain what it means for a typical newspaper, such as the Telegraph?

    It varies from provider to provider, and different vendors sells different newspapers. Sometimes they are part of packages and sometimes they are not.

    Those are annual costs per title of newspaper. Some of the larger British papers—those that focus on economics—cost about $25,000. Some of the others cost about $11,000 to $13,000 or $14,000. It really varies, depending possibly on what the market will bear, possibly on the circulation, and obviously the cost that the actual publisher of the newspaper charges these vendors for the rights to redistribute.

    Is there any such subscription rate on the other parts of Quorum, for the national papers that we take off of every day?

    Yes, there is. It's a little difficult to explain, but Public Works and Government Services actually has a contract and provides us with the bulk of the newspapers that are available in NewsDesk or ParlMedia that are used to create Quorum on a daily basis. We pay about $227,000 for some additional newspapers, predominantly regional newspapers that are not covered by Public Works. We also pay the additional cost of providing those international newspapers that I've mentioned, and that alone is almost $100,000.

    Thank you very much.

    Before we conclude, it looks as though this will be our last meeting of the year. I want to wish everybody Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas and all the best into the new year.

     Élise, I understand you're going to be departing from the committee for a little while, so I wish you very well too.

     Senator, did you have some closing comments?

    Only that we wish her well in the delivery of a bouncing baby girl, bouncing baby boy, whatever it may be, which will take place relatively soon. I think you'll all join with me in wishing her every best wish.

    Some hon members: Hear, hear!

    Thank you.

    The meeting is adjourned.