LIPA Committee Meeting

STANDING JOINT COMMITTEE ON THE LIBRARY OF PARLIAMENT

COMITÉ MIXTE PERMANENT DE LA BIBLIOTHÈQUE DU PARLEMENT

The Standing Joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Commons on the Library of Parliament met this day at 10:00 a.m. to elect a joint chairman, and to consider its order of reference on the expenditures set out in Parliamentary Vote 10 of the Estimates for the fiscal year ending March 31, 2000.

Mr. Gurbax Singh Mali (Joint Chairman): in the Chair.

[English]

The Joint Chairman (Mr. Malhi): Honourable members, I see a quorum. Shall we proceed?

An hon. members: Agreed.

The Joint Chairman (Mr. Malhi): I have a copy of Senator Eymard Corbin's letter of resignation. It is addressed to Ms Catherine Piccinin, Joint Clerk, Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament, Room 1031 - Chambers Building, The Senate of Canada, Ottawa, K1A OA6. The letter states:

Dear Ms Piccinin, Please note that on March 26, 1999, I informed the Government Whip in the Senate that I was withdrawing from the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament, both as a member and as Joint Chair.

Yours sincerely, Éymard G. Corbin, Senator

Ms Cathy Piccinin, Joint Clerk of the Committee: As Mr. Mali has said, there is a vacancy in the Senate chair, and it is my duty as joint clerk from the Senate to preside over the election of the joint chair from the Senate.

I am prepared to receive motions to that effect.

[Translation]

Senator Losier-Cool: I would like to nominate the Honourable Senator Louis J. Robichaud as co-chair of the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament.

The Joint Clerk (Ms. Piccinin): Are there any other motions to this effect? The Honourable Senator Losier-Cool moves that the Honourable Senator Robichaud be elected co-chair of this committee.

Is it the pleasure of honourable senators and members to adopt the motion?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

The Joint Clerk (Ms. Piccinin): I declare the motion carried and invite Senator Robichaud to take the chair.

[English]

The Joint Chairman (Mr. Malhi): Honourable members, first I should like to congratulate my new co-chair, the Honourable Senator Louis Robichaud.

Senator Louis J. Robichaud (Joint Chairman): in the Chair.

The Joint Chairman (Mr. Malhi): On to the next item of business. Our first witness today is Mr. Richard Paré, who will present new electronic products.

Mr. Richard Paré, Parliamentary Librarian, Library of Parliament: I wish to offer my congratulations to Senator Robichaud as the co-chair of the committee, and I thank Mr. Mali for giving us the opportunity to make a short presentation on the electronic products of the library.

You will have a presentation on the news services, PARLMEDIA, the reference materials, the research publications, and also PARLCAT, which is the on-line catalogue of the library; PARLCD, which provides access to CD collections of the library, and also PARLINFO, which is a general database information on the Parliament. This presentation will take not more than 20 minutes, and then we will address the Estimates.

I will invite Madam Micheline Beaulieu, database librarian, to give a demonstration.

With new technology we sometimes last minute problems. We have tried to solve this particular problem, but we have been unable to do so. Therefore, we must skip that presentation and move on to the next item which is, I believe, the Estimates.

If the problem is solved during the course of our discussion, we could have the demonstration.

The Joint Chairman (Mr. Malhi): Is that agreed?

Some hon. members: Agreed.

Mr. Paré: On the Main Estimates of the library, which is on the agenda, you have received the Report on Plans and Priorities. Pursuant to the new practice adopted by the government, the Senate and the House of Commons, the Library of Parliament presented its first Report on Plans and Priorities to the two speakers this May. The information presented in the report enables the review of the Estimates in a well-defined context in an effort to analyze the library's long-term plans.

This fall, we will be moving to the second stage, that of producing a performance report. This report will be used to measure our success in terms of planned performance expectations.

Before I answer questions on that issue, I have an issue I should like to submit to the committee. It has to do with the Quorum, the daily press monitoring service. Following recent comments received regarding the library's daily press monitoring service, Quorum, we would like to consult parliamentarians in order to ensure that this service more effectively meets their needs. Through focus groups, we would appreciate the opportunity to obtain feedback on a variety of aspects, such as the original coverage, the number of articles selected, the size of each issue, the organization of stories, the delivery time and the availability of electronic press services. This exercise will be conducted using the services of an impartial facilitator. Several alternative versions of Quorum will be available to assist the participants in providing their comments.

We have asked the whips of the different parties to select participants for this focus group. We would like to complete the exercise before the June recess. If there is any major change to be made to Quorum, we would like to have the time to implement it before Parliament resumes in the fall. As members of the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament, you may be interested in participating in these focus groups.

[Translation]

On the subject of renovations to the Library, as you no doubt already know, the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada has called a temporary halt to the planning and renovation work on the Parliament Buildings.

Obviously, this also includes planned renovations to the Library. The Minister has set up an advisory committee on the Parliament Buildings and since the Library was initially included in the scheduled renovations, I agreed to serve on this committee.

No decision has yet been made on the extent of the renovations to be carried out on the Library of Parliament, or on when exactly the work will proceed. Plans to relocate the Library temporarily are, however, still continuing, with the blessing of PWGSC.

We have requested that space be available in the Centre Block to operate a small branch library throughout the scheduled renovations. That concludes my brief remarks.

[English]

We will be pleased to answer your questions. I have invited Mr. François LeMay, Mr. Hugh Finsten and Madam Monique Boutin to assist if you need more detailed answers, but I will do my best to answer all of your questions.

[Translation]

Senator Bolduc: Since I am not too familiar with the rules, may we ask several questions, or only one?

The Joint Chairman (Senator Robichaud): I am not certain what the format is, but I believe this is an informal meeting. Therefore, if I am to decide, I think you should be allowed to ask several questions.

Senator Bolduc: It is my understanding, Mr. Paré, that along with your researchers assigned to the various Senate and House committees, you help select the expert witnesses who are called in to testify. I have served in the Senate for ten years and overall, I think the Library research officers do a fine job selecting witnesses. However, one thing that I have noticed is that a fairly large number of expert witnesses seem to be from Carleton University or the University of Ottawa.

I can understand your desire to save money by choosing university academics from right here in Ottawa, but in my opinion, I think the committee would benefit from hearing from witnesses who come from other parts of Canada and have a different perspective on things. I realize that every university has experts in a wide range of field on staff, but the fact remains that it would be nice to hear different viewpoints expressed. Would you care to comment on this matter?

Mr. Paré: The witnesses are selected by the research officer, in consultation with the committee chair or co-chair as well as with, more than likely, committee members. The decision does not rest entirely with the research officer. He may suggest the names of certain individuals, but he does not decide who will testify before the committee.

As for your comment about the large number of expert witnesses from Carleton or the University of Ottawa, I do not know if financial considerations have anything to do with this, because witness costs do not come under the Library's budget, but rather under the House or Senate budgets.

Senator Bolduc: Might I suggest that you urge officials to consider expert witnesses from other universities? The committee generally covers the travel expenses of academics, but as rule, business people defray their own travel costs.

Mr. Paré: I will pass your suggestion along.

Senator Bolduc: My second question concerns the collections you spoke about in your document. How many collections are housed in the Library and what kind of collections are we talking about? Undoubtedly you have some large collections of legal papers. Could you be more specific?

Mr. Paré: The most popular collection items would have to be legislation, parliamentary documents, in particular federal and provincial papers, government publications and documents relating to all spheres of social sciences. We also have a fairly extensive collection of works about the history of Canada. I would have to say that these are among the most important of the Library's holdings.

Senator Bolduc: Then, your collection and that of the National Library are considered to be distinct?

Mr. Paré: That is correct. I would have to say that the National Library's collection is far more extensive than that of the Library of Parliament, more so considering that it receives on legal deposit two copies of every work published in Canada. That allows it to cover a much wider range of areas.

Senator Bolduc: You are required to charge a fee for the services you provide. Accordingly, you take in some revenues. Are these added to your budget, or are you required to remit these funds to the Government of Canada?

Mr. Paré: We only charge a fee under exceptional circumstances and in these cases, the money is returned to the Consolidated Revenue Fund. Our souvenir kiosk is our only revenue-generating operation.

Senator Bolduc: I note that privy councillors are authorized to use your services. Why do privy councillors have access your services, while others do not? What criteria do you follow?

Mr. Paré: All former MPs and senators have access to the Library. Occasionally, professors may need to consult more specialized material relating to the parliamentary field.

Senator Bolduc: All of these individuals are listed on page 17, but in addition to these, we have privy councillors who are not part of the academic community.

Mr. Paré: Yes, but they are members of the Privy Council.

[English]

Ms Grey: I would refer to page 8 which gives the Estimates from 1997 through 2000. In fact the budget proposed for 1999-2000 is higher than any other since 1997. Where does that money come from? Is it from the general surplus that the government has? Did you ask for more and they graciously agree?

Mr. Paré: We asked for it because this is how we present our estimates. We prepare our estimates and we proposed that to the two speakers. There then ensues a discussion and they either accept or do not accept our estimates. This year they accepted some increase. In the year 2000, we have an increase of 11 per cent in the parliamentary public programs. That includes the guides, the visitor centres and the educational services.

There is a program run by the Teachers Institute on Canadian parliamentary democracy that has been very popular the last three years. There was a strong request to extend that program by one day, so part of the increase is due to that.

The operating budget saw a 9 per cent increase. That is mainly for the collective bargaining agreement we reached with the research officers last fall.

As well, due to forthcoming renovations, we must plan for the storage of the collection. That will be an additional cost to our operating budget.

Ms Grey: You just said that there will be a break or a pause in the renovations. Will that affect this amount at all?

Mr. Paré: No, because the planning continues. Even at Public Works the planning continues, but they do not know when exactly these plans will be implemented.

Ms Grey: Does that come out of your separate budget?

Mr. Paré: The planning for the collections comes from our budget.

Ms Grey: Thank you.

Senator Bolduc: You have 60 experts in the four divisions. That means 15 experts in each division, or is the personnel distributed otherwise?

Mr. Paré: We have more in the law and government division and in the political and social science division. We have about 20 people in each. We have a good number, almost 18, in the economics division. We have less in the science and technology division, about nine or 10.

Senator Bolduc: May I remind that you that politicians may talk a lot, but it is the scientists who change the world.

Mr. Paré: I wish to add something to one of the previous responses, senator. You asked about the number in the collection and I omitted to give you that. We have a collection of about 675,000 books and documents. This is the approximate number we usually cite.

[Translation]

The Joint Chairman (Senator Robichaud): We can now proceed with the presentation on new electronic products.

[English]

Mr. Paré: I will invite Madam Micheline Beaulieu to make the presentation.

[Editor's Note: Whereupon Ms Beaulieu made a presentation to the committee.]

The Joint Chairman (Senator Robichaud): Thank you for your presentation. Is everything that was demonstrated accessible to parliamentarians?

Mr. Paré: Yes.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Robichaud): How can it be made accessible to the population at large, say, residents of Calgary, Moncton and Toronto? Is it possible technologically?

Mr. Paré: Yes, it is possible technologically. Information on our parliamentary web site is available on the Internet to the public. What you were shown this morning is on the Intranet, Parliament's local area network. This service is available to members and their staff, rather than the population at large. Eventually, we will put more information on the Internet. Hence, it will be available to the population at large.

Senator Bolduc: What do you mean by “eventually”? Do you mean next year?

Mr. Paré: It will take time. I will give you an example relating to the same problem they have in the Congressional Research Service in Washington.

If we put all the research papers on the Internet so they are accessible to the public, we will have feedback and reaction. These papers are prepared for parliamentarians, not for the public. That issue must be addressed before putting more information on the Internet.

Senator Bolduc: I can understand that.

The Joint Chairman (Senator Robichaud): Thank you very much.

The Joint Chairman (Mr. Malhi): I no longer have a quorum in order to deal further with the Estimates. There being no other business, the meeting is adjourned.

The committee adjourned.