LIPA Committee Meeting

Notices of Meeting include information about the subject matter to be examined by the committee and date, time and place of the meeting, as well as a list of any witnesses scheduled to appear. The Evidence is the edited and revised transcript of what is said before a committee. The Minutes of Proceedings are the official record of the business conducted by the committee at a sitting.

For an advanced search, use Publication Search tool.

If you have any questions or comments regarding the accessibility of this publication, please contact us at accessible@parl.gc.ca.

Previous day publication Next day publication

37th PARLIAMENT, 2nd SESSION

Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament

EVIDENCE

CONTENTS

Thursday, May 15, 2003

0905

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.))

Mr. Stephen Kiar (Senior Parter, COMPAS)

0910

0915

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin (Québec, Lib.))

Mr. Stephen Kiar

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

0920

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

Senator Roch Bolduc (Québec, P.C.)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

Senator Roch Bolduc

Mr. Philippe Azzie (Senior Consultant, COMPAS)

Senator Roch Bolduc

Mr. Philippe Azzie

Mr. Marcel Gagnon (Champlain, BQ)

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin)

Mr. Marcel Gagnon

Mr. Stephen Kiar

0925

0930

0935

Ms. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West—Nepean, Lib.)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

0940

Ms. Marlene Catterall

Mr. Stephen Kiar

Senator Michael J. Forrestall (Dartmouth/Eastern Shore)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

0945

0950

0955

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

1000

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

Miss Deborah Grey (Edmonton North, Canadian Alliance)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

1005

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

1010

Miss Deborah Grey

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

Miss Deborah Grey

Mr. Stephen Kiar

Miss Deborah Grey

Mr. Stephen Kiar

Miss Deborah Grey

Mr. Richard Paré (Parliamentary Librarian, Library of Parliament)

Miss Deborah Grey

Mr. Richard Paré

Miss Deborah Grey

Mr. Richard Paré

Mr. Hugh Finsten (Associate Parliamentary Librarian, Library of Parliament)

Miss Deborah Grey

Mr. Richard Paré

Miss Deborah Grey

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

Miss Deborah Grey

Mr. Stephen Kiar

Miss Deborah Grey

Mr. Stephen Kiar

Miss Deborah Grey

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

Mr. Marcel Gagnon

1015

Mr. Richard Paré

Mr. Marcel Gagnon

Mr. Richard Paré

1020

Mr. Marcel Gagnon

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin)

Mr. Stephen Kiar

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

Senator Michael J. Forrestall

1025

Mr. Richard Paré

1030

Senator Michael J. Forrestall

Mr. Richard Paré

Mr. Hugh Finsten

Senator Michael J. Forrestall

Mr. Hugh Finsten

Senator Michael J. Forrestall

Miss Deborah Grey

Senator Michael J. Forrestall

Miss Deborah Grey

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

1035

Mr. Richard Paré

1040

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

Mr. Richard Paré

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett)

CANADA

Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament

NUMBER 005

2nd SESSION

37th PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

Thursday, May 15, 2003

[Recorded by Electronic Apparatus]

¿ (0905)

[English]

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett (St. Paul's, Lib.)): We will now call this astounding fifth meeting of the Library of Parliament committee together. This is five meetings in one year. I want it on the record. And we didn't even get struck till the spring. So this is impressive.

We are happy to welcome Stephen Kiar and Philippe Azzie from COMPAS, who did the consultation with parliamentarians and their staff on the function of the Library of Parliament. If it is the will of the committee, we will hear their presentation and then go to questions.

Mr. Stephen Kiar (Senior Parter, COMPAS): Thank you very much, first of all, for inviting us to be here today.

I'm going to start quickly with the purpose of the study. It was multifaceted. The first was to gather information on the expectations of parliamentarians and parliamentary staff on their information and research needs.The next was to measure the perceptions of parliamentarians of the library's role and image, including what the Library of Parliament should represent to Canadians and parliamentarians. The third was to provide feedback from the target audiences on the Library of Parliament's future directions and orientation.

The emphasis of this presentation will be on the consultation with the parliamentarians themselves. That's where I'm going to now. After that we'll be talking about the online survey that was conducted with the staff. But more of the time will be spent on the feedback received from the parliamentarians.

I'd like to talk a little bit about the methodology that was used. It was in-depth interviews. We consider that to be qualitative research, rather than a quantitative study. It's not statistically representative in the plus or minus blank per cent 19 times out of the proverbial 20. Rather, it provides insight into the views that are held by the target audience. But it's not intended to be truly representative. The phrase we would use is “reflective of the audience”. The emphasis in the research we conducted was on heavy and moderate users of the library, rather than the occasional users. The thinking there was simply that these people are the ones most able to provide meaningful feedback on how the library is doing and what the library should be doing. However, a number of occasional users were also included in the study.

We ended up with 38 executive interviews being conducted. It included a mix of members of the Senate and the House of Commons. I believe there were five members of the Senate and thirty-three of the House of Commons. We included all party affiliations, language, region, and gender. We tried to make it as reflective as possible. But we were in the hands of those who called us back in the actual implementation of the study.

I'm going to start off with a summary of what we found from these in-depth interviews conducted with parliamentarians. First of all, there was a high level of satisfaction with the research services provided by the Library of Parliament. The staff were perceived as highly competent people and dedicated professionals who delivered on time as promised with huge consistency. Parliamentarians tended to identify the Library of Parliament with the research services. First and foremost, that was the image that came to mind, not some of the other branches or services. The Library of Parliament was seen to be a unique “island of objectivity”. That's a quote from the feedback we received. It was valued as a primary means for sifting through divergent opinions to arrive at a position. I'll come back to many of these things in greater detail afterwards.

The Library of Parliament was identified as an important source of information by everyone we talked to. For some of them it was their primary source of information. For most of them it was an important complementary source of information. It was also seen to be a unique source of information for anything related to legislative and parliamentary history.

There was little awareness of the three branches/divisions that provide the services. Related to that, many participants believe that the library and its services need to become more visible to parliamentarians. Of course, that becomes quite a challenge in a world where there is so much information that people are exposed to information overload.

Parliamentarians were vigilant about ensuring that the library remain unbiased and available to serve their needs. They were wary of creeping bias and of any shift in the library's role that would put its support to parliamentarians at risk. I'll come back to that. If there were any new directions, parliamentarians would have to be reassured that the support they're receiving now wouldn't be compromised or diminished, just because it was seen to be of such high quality.

That was the summary of observations as a whole. Now I'm going to be talking about some of the specific areas we focused on. The first one is the perceived role of the library. Most viewed the research services in support of parliamentarians as the library's primary role. That's really the custom research that they're asked to do. Many people spoke positively of the supportive role the library plays in their own communications efforts, primarily with constituents, but not only. There was awareness of the collections, but that was mostly linked to research services. There was less awareness of the services to the general public. Products and services such as Quorum, PARLMEDIA, and legislative summaries were the types of things that came back to us when we talked about the role.

¿ (0910)

I want to go away from the overheads and just give you a sense of what we heard back from parliamentarians about what the Library of Parliament represents to them. There was a wide range of positive values. Here are the types of things we heard: “an invaluable resource”, “information that is comprehensive and non-partisan”, they “stand above the fray”, and it's staffed by “wonderful people who provide me with everything I ask for.” They are truly seen to be a trusted source of unbiased information. That was the theme we heard from almost everyone, whether they were from the Senate or the House of Commons and regardless of party affiliation and the different kinds of subgroups we included in here. Again, the non-partisan approach was emphasized. The Library of Parliament was seen to be an essential tool of good government. Better informed parliamentarians will be more assertive. It was seen to be a powerful tool for the future democratization of Parliament. The focus was very much on the people. They were seen to be “excellent” people, “highly competent”, “very responsive”, and “always friendly and polite”. These are direct quotes, which weren't picked just because they are flattering but because they are representative of what we heard back. The last thing I'd throw in here in terms of what Parliament represents to parliamentarians is the physical library. The library itself is seen to be an icon of Parliament. You put these things together, and in many people's eyes the Library of Parliament truly represents some of the best attributes of Canadian democracy itself.

Other things that were talked about in terms of the perceived role related to a more active public communications role. A slight majority don't want the Library of Parliament to be more engaged in an active communications role. That really had to do with what I mentioned before, and that was simply taking away a little more from what the Library of Parliament is already doing. Many others who do see an active communications role support that because the library is trusted. A few of them would like it to be more visible because of the values it represents, including those I just talked to you about, such as non-partisanship, balance, value for money, those kinds of things. A few also cited its historical or collective memory as a unique and valuable library attribute.

The title of the next area we looked at is Preparing for the Near Future, not the distant future, but with new directions. The most frequent volunteered response focused on information technology, which is not surprising seeing how the world is evolving. There was a strong focus on the need to stay up to date with information technologies, in particular in the area of ease of use, making it accessible to them. There was also a good level of confidence in the library's ability to do this. A few stated that detailed parliamentary scrutiny of departmental budgets and estimates will require substantial library support.

A few people argued for a more proactive role for library research services. It was suggested that a futures group be put in place to anticipate social trends and prepare parliamentarians. They see this function as one remedy for the poor quality of parliamentary debate. So it's a matter of a little more support in that area to elevate the level of debate, which was subject to some criticism.

When we looked at the provision of services by the Library of Parliament right now, there was a very high level of satisfaction. Once again, for most of the discussion with the parliamentarians the focus was squarely on the research services. We brought them to other areas where we wanted specific feedback. But if we didn't do that, that's what they talked about. That's what they associate with the Library of Parliament. The work was seen to be of very high quality and the expertise to be trusted. The diversity of the expertise was singled out on numerous occasions. The commitment to an unbiased and balanced perspective was routinely identified. Dedicated staff, which I mentioned, was often singled out.

¿ (0915)

What we were struck by was the strong emotional tone used by the parliamentarians with us. You could really get a sense that there was a sincere appreciation of and respect for the Library of Parliament and even pride in the Library of Parliament as an institution of Parliament. So it wasn't only in the content that we were aware of these positive things, but even in the emotion that was expressed.

In terms of areas of concern or in need of improvement, several were concerned that the library is under-resourced for what it needs to do and the support it needs to provide to parliamentarians now. Several would like more frequent and direct communication with research staff. But I'll give you an example of the difficulties in doing that. We all know of the harried lives that members of Parliament live. Some were talking about the need to have greater awareness of Library of Parliament services. But just before we did the research, a brochure that did that was sent to them, and many people didn't recall receiving it. It's that information overload. So it's a simple suggestion, but it does not have a simple solution. Several believe that the library and its functions must be more visible. That speaks to the same point. Although the service was often called quick and prompt, a few people believe that it is becoming less so. There was a desire that the constituency offices and staff be provided with full electronic access to the Library of Parliament, clearly because of their remote location. There was a sense that people in those more remote offices had greater difficulty accessing Library of Parliament services. A few were concerned about creeping bias, as I mentioned. A few said that the research quality was uneven and dependent on the individual researcher assigned to it. One western MP talked about a central Canadian slant in some of the research support. But you can see here that a number of the concerns identified use the words “a few”, “one”, things like that. The concerns tended not be widespread for the most part.

In terms of background, we wanted to--

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin (Québec, Lib.)): Could we go back to the previous slide. You skipped the second line there. I was wondering what you meant by that.

Mr. Stephen Kiar: Do you mean where it says that a few were concerned about creeping bias?

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin): Yes. What do you mean by that? This is the second time you mentioned it.

Mr. Stephen Kiar: The creeping bias was having a sense of a government position to some of the information, rather than the balanced view that is still holding sway with a large number of parliamentarians. So it's that creeping bias in the sense that the government agenda might be coming in a little more than people would like, just because it's a resource for members of Parliament regardless of their party affiliation.

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin): That's an important issue. Did that criticism occur often? I think that's a very valid criticism if it's--

Mr. Stephen Kiar: It occurred. We heard it, but not often. I would not use the word “consistent” whatsoever, nor the word “routine”. In the slide we say “A few”. In a study of about 38 parliamentarians, that would be in the three, four, or five category, not the ten or twelve.

¿ (0920)

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin): This would come from opposition MPs, of course. This is a serious issue if that's what is perceived as....

Mr. Stephen Kiar: I would suggest that it wouldn't come only from opposition MPs, because government MPs were also looking for a source that wasn't like the minister's office or their research bureau, where they were able to get totally balanced, objective information.

Senator Roch Bolduc (Québec, P.C.): In terms of the whole spectrum of public policy issues, is the bias perceived more in economic issues or in social issues?

Mr. Stephen Kiar: I can't answer that.

Senator Roch Bolduc: It's important. Obviously, there are different economic philosophies. Sometimes the same one has been in power for 50 years. But that aspect is important.

Mr. Philippe Azzie (Senior Consultant, COMPAS): There was no specific characterization of the creeping bias as being in any particular area, social or economic.

Senator Roch Bolduc: What about other issues, such as justice issues, social security, or defence?

Mr. Philippe Azzie: No. To come back to one of the points that was made, it was very few, and one bias was--

[Translation]

Mr. Marcel Gagnon (Champlain, BQ): You have highlighted a recurrent point. The fact that it recurs means that it does give rise to concerns. I find it interesting that this point is raised. However, I do not know whether we can ask questions yet.

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin): No, we have not yet gone to questions.

Mr. Marcel Gagnon: We will come back to this later, then. Thank you.

[English]

Mr. Stephen Kiar: As my colleague Phil mentioned, there was no focusing on where the creeping bias was. It was a general comment about a perception that some of it was emerging.

To provide a context to better understand the role the Library of Parliament plays in meeting the information needs of parliamentarians, we wanted to better understand their main sources of information now. Needless to say, there is a mass of information out there to which they're exposed, both of the solicited and unsolicited variety. As I mentioned briefly, the Library of Parliament was always identified as an important source of information and occasionally as the main source of information.

What is unique about the Library of Parliament, which we found in the research, is that it plays two primary parts in the research information process. It's often the first place people will go to get the big picture, to get the broad perspective of an issue. It's a place that parliamentarians will go with confidence to provide almost the initial grounding in an issue. But what's quite interesting is that it's often the last place people will go. They're having now to form their own decision on a different kind of policy issue, and then they will go back to the Library of Parliament. So it forms, I think, a very unique place in the information/research cycle at the very beginning and at the very end, kind of the bookends to help parliamentarians better understand what they need to understand.

In terms of other sources of information, their own research assistant, not surprisingly, plays an important role for most parliamentarians. Several parliamentarians use the Internet as a first resource, and then they pursue other sources as required. Often they will go to the Library of Parliament to confirm information on the Internet that they're not quite sure about. Special interest groups and constituents offering opinions are also important sources of information. Most parliamentarians cultivate networks of trusted information sources, which include NGOs, academics, industry contacts, and the like. The news media were very important, in particular to stay in touch with the riding. So the news media at the national and local levels were seen very distinctly as being important. Consulting with ministers' offices or party critics on relevant topics was important.

I'm hopping down to the last bullet. Party research bureaus were used. However, from parliamentarians across all party affiliations there was a sense that the information they were receiving from the research bureau did have a partisan slant to it, and that limited its utility to many of them. Some also felt that research bureaus themselves would go to the Library of Parliament, so they went directly to the Library of Parliament simply to cut out the middleman.

In the second-last bullet, most parliamentarians and their offices have devised different kinds of personal working styles to be able to sort out the wheat from the chaff, to be able to identify what was most important in the information they do receive, given the information overload they're subjected to.

Now we're going to focus more on the reasons people are or are not using the Library of Parliament. With regard to the reasons for using the Library of Parliament, most seek out interested parties to get diverse opinions, and the Library of Parliament fits that role because of the diversity of sources they use. They seek out the Library of Parliament for balance and facts. That enables them to better assess the divergent opinions that are out there. As I mentioned, the Library of Parliament does provide that broad perspective, and because of that, it is often seen to be the best place to start. For many it's simply seen to be an important complement to other sources of information, because it's trusted, fact based, and diverse. As I also mentioned, it's seen to be a unique source for the history of legislation and Parliament itself and even for cross-jurisdiction comparisons. Also, on a more practical matter, parliamentarians sometimes resort to the library, and almost a little apologetically, simply because their own staff is overloaded. In a sense it extends the staff and the resources at their disposal.

¿ (0925)

With regard to reasons for not using the Library of Parliament, they're less likely to use the Library of Parliament when they themselves are already well-grounded in an issue, when they develop an expertise over time that they're very comfortable with, and when they have a trusted network of contacts on an issue. They simply don't see the need to go to the Library of Parliament, because their needs are met otherwise.

In the area of new technologies, as was mentioned, several use the Internet. However, very few use the library's online services. Once again I'm talking about the parliamentarians themselves, not the parliamentary staff. PARLMEDIA is an exception. Several MPs and senators use that on a daily basis. Many believe that staying up to date with information technologies is very important to the library's evolution. The notion of e-consultation polarized participants. Some focused on the fact that it can increase public access. However, others view it as non-representative and therefore one tool to be used among many, but not one that should be relied upon. Several have little idea of what electronic or online services are currently available from the Library of Parliament.

One of the directions in which the Library of Parliament can go would be digitizing the library collection. When we asked about that specifically, it elicited cautious support or indifference. Some were concerned about the expense involved in doing that. Most were open to alternative media but stressed the availability of choice to suit the working styles of the parliamentarians themselves. So that would be the form in which the research would be provided to the parliamentarians. Two participants specifically focused on having easier remote online access to parliamentary resources.

That is the quick overview of the research that was conducted with the parliamentarians themselves. We can come back to that in the conclusions and recommendations we'll be sharing with you and also in the question-and-answer part.

Where we're going now is to the online survey we conducted with parliamentary staff. To give a little bit of information on the methodology that was used, we sent out almost 850 e-mail invitations. We say valid e-mail invitations because we excluded ones that were bounced back. You can see the breakdown. A little more than 300 were to staff of senators, and a little bit more than 500 were to staff of MPs. In total 262 answered us and had started some part of the questionnaire. That represents about 30% of the total. I do want to emphasize that before going into this we had no idea of who in the parliamentarian's office actually needed to use the Library of Parliament services. One would suppose that not all of those 850 e-mail addresses would be potential or actual Library of Parliament users. So we had to send it to all of them. In the methodology we asked people to exclude themselves, which in research tends to have a limited impact. Some do, some don't.

A total of 176, which represents a little over 20%, completed this survey all the way to the end. There was a strong tendency for only one assistant in the office to answer the questions even though they had instructions not to do that. We really wanted to hear from everyone who was exposed to and involved with the Library of Parliament. But you can see why they might have ignored that. Once again that tends to diminish the overall sample. That 20% represents 30% or 40% of all the offices of parliamentarians out there. We consider that to be a very acceptable response rate and certainly a reliable response rate, if not a fantastic response rate.

When you look at the next slide we're going to show you, we would like to present it to you so that you might have greater confidence in whom we heard from. The column on the left shows who responded to the survey. The one on the right shows who was in the sampling frame, that list of 850 e-mails. You can see that in most areas they're very close. In other words, who responded to the survey was very much reflected in whom we went out to reach in the first place. In terms of Senate or House, they're within three percentage points of each other, which is excellent. In terms of party affiliation, we heard from everyone, with the following caveat: we tended to hear a bit more from the Liberals and the Bloc Québécois and a little less from the Progressive Conservatives. The others were right on their proportions. There was good regional representation, which was very close to the actual sample. Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and the Atlantic area were a little bit under-represented. That's the distribution of the final questionnaires that we received.

¿ (0930)

When I look at a summary, these are some of the key points. The first is that there was a positive attitude toward the library. When we talk about convergence, we're really saying that there was some consistency between the parliamentarians' responses and the staff's responses not only on the close-ended questions but also on the open-ended questions. Once again that gives you a sense of confidence that there's nothing hidden there that you're not hearing about. The quality of service delivery is rated very highly on virtually every aspect that was measured as well as overall, and I'm going to be providing details about that. A small majority, 58%, prefer obtaining services with the help of the Library of Parliament's staff; in other words, not just going there themselves but having a guide to help them. However, only a few, 19%, state that they're used to dealing with one specific person. So it's not the pattern that's there now.

There was a very high consensus about the usefulness of particular products and tools. As examples we'll mention PARLMEDIA, the legislative summaries, LEGISinfo, and Quorum. Approximately the same percentage, 40%, of staff members have attended more than one of three types of seminars or training sessions: a how-to seminar for staff, public policy seminars, and personalized training on how to use the Internet and electronic services.

The next slide is focusing on the universe we went to. We wanted to get a good handle on who were the potential users of different services and whether they actually used the services, to get a sense, for instance, as to whether some of the people who deal with the public are themselves unaware of or not using the services. It's the same thing with research and the documentation itself. The yellow bar is all the ones who say that their job function involves a need to use these three different kinds of service areas, if I can term it that. The blue bar is the ones who are actually using the Library of Parliament services in that area. You can see that for documentation and publications, 93% are potential users and 88% are actual users. So there's very little gap there, really. In terms of the research side of it, 86% are potential users and 81% are actual users. Again, it's very close. The last one is information on Parliament. That's really the services with the general public. Of the survey sample, 68% were potential users, and, in percentage terms relative to the other ones, 52% were actual users. You can see at the bottom that 97% of potential users had used at least one of the services, so almost everyone had used a service, and 95% were actual users of a specific service.

People who were a potential user but didn't use the service were asked why they didn't. You won't have a slide on that, but that is in the report. The main reason is that they didn't know about it. Other reasons identified less often were that they used other services or they didn't have a need. But it was an awareness issue for the most part.

Here is the number one question, the top bar that you see there. That had to do with how satisfied they were overall with the quality of service when using Library of Parliament services. It is what we would call the most important question in the staff online survey. You can see there that the red is very satisfied and the blue is somewhat satisfied. It shows there that 95% expressed satisfaction, and 69%, over two-thirds, expressed strong satisfaction. So not only is satisfaction widespread, it's relatively intense.

¿ (0935)

The second bar down below is how consistent the service is that they receive from the Library of Parliament. The results are not very much different: 55%, a majority, think that it has been very consistent for them, and another 36% say somewhat consistent. So over 91% in total suggest that it's at least somewhat consistent across their different requirements.

In terms of the specific assessment of Library of Parliament service delivery, on the far left are the different things we assessed. They're not related to any individual product or service, but rather across the Library of Parliament services as a whole. They include information being non-partisan; complete; accurate; provided in a quick, timely manner; and accessible in the official language of choice. They also include ease of access to Library of Parliament services, being informed on the Library of Parliament services that are available to them and how to access them, the courteousness of the staff, and the professionalism of the staff.

Once again, by the way, the red is very satisfied and the blue is somewhat satisfied. For every one of these, except the extent to which they are informed about the services, you have 80% or more express at least moderate satisfaction, with a majority, except for that one item, expressing strong satisfaction. Satisfaction for each one of these dimensions tends to be widespread and relatively intense. We asked the parliamentary staff which were the most important of these service dimensions. We asked about all of them. All of them were seen to be at least moderately important, but the ones that were seen to be most important were that the information be provided quickly and that it be accurate and verifiable. One is 90% satisfied, and the other one is 85% satisfied.

Ms. Marlene Catterall (Ottawa West—Nepean, Lib.): Madam Chair, can I ask why people were very dissatisfied when they said they were very dissatisfied?

Mr. Stephen Kiar: We have a sense from the question there that most of it is inherent. For instance, the 6% that were dissatisfied with the accuracy of information would have questioned the accuracy of some information they had received. That was probably not consistently because we've seen that the consistency was rated quite highly. It would probably go back to the individual instances when, for instance, the information was not seen to be non-partisan or complete or provided in a quick manner.

As a rule of thumb we use these types of questions. Many of them are what the Treasury Board has designated as part of a common measurement tool for the federal government service improvement initiative. So this becomes what survey firms like our own, COMPAS, are responsible for doing. This becomes part of a template. Many of these questions are used for all different services. I myself have used them for programs such as employment insurance; Canada student loans; the Canada Pension Plan; and Aboriginal Business Canada, which is a funding group with Industry Canada. My point is that we have a lot of experience with these questions. I've done over 12 studies with these kinds of questions in the last year alone.

When you have dissatisfaction under 10%, that's about as good as it gets. Usually, I'm telling clients that a flag should go up when you have dissatisfaction in the 12% to 15% range and above. You have significant problems when you enter the 20% range. When you have something in the 6% to 9% range, I'm not saying that anyone should ever be happy with any degree of dissatisfaction, but what I am saying is that in our world it's often very difficult to be perfect. What you have here is a very controlled level of dissatisfaction, especially vis-à-vis other services that are provided to specific client groups. Right now for the first time we have norms against which to compare this.

I might not have answered it directly, but I hope I answered it well enough.

¿ (0940)

Ms. Marlene Catterall: I'll tell you a story. One hotel manager in this city told me that the reason he likes having women on his management team is that they pay attention to every complaint. He said that generally his male managers don't. They think, if we had only one complaint, we had 100 satisfied customers. The women pay attention to who complained and why and what we are doing to fix it.

Mr. Stephen Kiar: So I gave you a male answer. Damn.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Senator Michael J. Forrestall (Dartmouth/Eastern Shore): And a female corrected it.

Mr. Stephen Kiar: Those are the different dimensions. I've probably spent enough time there.

Those last couple of slides looked at the Library of Parliament services as a whole. Now we're going to look at a number of specific services and also bundles of services. This measures the awareness of the different types of services divided into three groups, which is how the Library of Parliament itself divides them. The first one is the information, documentation, and reference services, the traditional view of a library itself. The next one is the research and analysis services, which once again is what parliamentarians have on their mind and what they focus on most when they're talking about the Library of Parliament. That's the main image or impression of it. The third one is the services for the general public, such as constituents, whether it's tours, school visits, or seats for question period, that kind of thing.

You end up with 76% claiming a comfortable level of awareness of the information and documentation group, with 28% totally agreeing with the statement we provided, while 78% provide the same type of score for the research and analysis services. So there's very little difference between the two. Again, in the minds of parliamentarians they tend to be grouped, and I would suggest that's probably the case for parliamentary staff as well. The awareness goes down for the programs that are directed at the general public, to 51% in terms of agreement with the general awareness question, if I can call it that.

Now we're going into the usage of and satisfaction with a number of specific types of services. We're starting off with the electronic services, and this is the degree of usage. The red is frequently used, the blue is occasionally used, and then you get very rarely and never. You can see that there's really only one service that's frequently used, and that is PARLMEDIA--60% frequently and another 19% occasionally. So in total about 80% at least use that occasionally. Those numbers go down to 30% occasionally for PARLREF, 36% for links and CD-ROMs, and 35% for PARLCAT. So there's very little difference among the other three.

In terms of the usefulness of these services, not suprisingly, we would have asked that only of people who actually used it at least occasionally, and they would have provided the response here. Red is very useful, and blue is somewhat useful. The first thing that will strike you is that it's all red or blue, so it's at least moderately useful for all of the services here. But 82% think that PARLMEDIA is very useful and 17% moderately useful. Then it goes down to that 40% to 56% that view the others as very useful, but almost all the rest of them are viewed at least moderately useful. That isn't surprising. If you are a user of it and you're continuing to be a user of it, then you're at least getting some utility from it.

We then look at the different publications. Quorum heads the list, with 59% saying they frequently use it and another 19% saying they occasionally use it. So almost 80% are at least occasional users of Quorum. Almost 80% are occasional users of the legislative summaries, but considerably fewer consider themselves to be frequent users of them. That goes down to 42%. When you get to LEGISinfo, about two-thirds consider themselves to be occasional users. The research branch is slightly under at 61%, and then you can see it taper. I'll leave the slide up for a little bit, but I won't go through each one of those. You can see here clearly that the main publications that are used are Quorum, legislative summaries, and LEGISinfo. Then it drops off pretty significantly, particularly in terms of frequent use.

¿ (0945)

Once again we asked about the usefulness of the different publications. This slide looks very little different from the other ones in that it's almost all red and blue. The thing that stands out is Quorum, which is the most used. We can see there that 95% find it at least moderately useful, and 75% consider it to be very useful. It shows as well that 75% also consider legislative summaries to be very useful, followed by 24% moderately, and 69% find LEGISinfo to be very useful. When you total these things up, they all come into the 96% to 98% area. The ones that top the list in terms of frequency of use are those that top the list in terms of intense usefulness, that very useful category, which is obviously how you would like it to be.

In terms of the number of general services that are used, here we have the breakdown: borrowing privileges, 68% are at least occasional users and 30% strong users; reference services, 62%; and research and analysis, 47%. I'm giving you the percentage that are at least occasional users. Then it lists committee assistance, branch library, consultation, and actually going to the parliamentary library, where 20% would go occasionally. Clearly, the world's a different place. People are not going directly to libraries anymore. They're using the services in other ways.

When we look at the usefulness of general services, it's blue and red. I'm repeating myself. It shows that for borrowing privileges, 96% see that as at least moderately useful and 82% as very useful. I won't go through this. For most of those things, two-thirds or more see them as at least very useful.

There are two more product groups. One is seminars or training sessions. About 40%, which is the red bar, of survey participants have attended each one of these things--personalized training on how to use the Internet and electronic services, how-to seminars, and public policy seminars. When we look at the usefulness of the training sessions, there is a similar pattern. Clear majorities find all of these things to be very useful, and almost all the rest of them see them to be at least moderately useful. So the training follows the pattern of the other ones.

The next area is the services that are provided to the general public. What we're looking at first is the level of use. So 71% of parliamentary staff surveyed are at least occasional users of arranging tours of the Parliament Buildings. For reserving seats in question period, you have 63% using it, and for organizing school visits, 50% are at least occasional users. It's not much different for information kits for teachers and students and booklets and brochures for guests and visitors.

I worked for a member of Parliament in a previous life, and I realized that quite often you have a differentiation of labour. You have more people involved in researching different types of things. But in my day there was certainly one person who was responsible for the public activities in an office. Therefore, you'd expect lower levels of use across the entire survey population.

In terms of the usefulness of the services to the public, the pattern is consistent with the others we've seen. You have almost everyone finding these services at least moderately useful and 70% or more seeing most of these services as being very useful to them, which is probably higher than for most of the measures we've seen. For all of them, a majority see them as being at least moderately useful.

¿ (0950)

We'll now move to preferences between print and electronic services. We gave people options as to how they would prefer to receive these kinds of publications, whether they preferred electronic, which is red, or print, which is blue. You can see that red dominates. That was a theme with parliamentary staff. Half of the parliamentary staff consider themselves to be above average or very good with technology issues. Almost all the rest consider themselves to be average, and almost no one considers themselves to be less than that. So there is a theme here, which is that they really want to embrace online. But there are also other measures in the survey that are consistent with that. The only thing that stands out is Quorum, the paper publication. It was there when I was here. You'd read it on the bus. You would read it wherever it was convenient to read it. It was more convenient than online. You can see here for the most part what they're looking for. The second one where there is a majority, but just a slight one, is information notes and brochures on Parliament. My suspicion there is that's the type of documentation they would like to hand out. They would like to have something physical to give to someone. That's the purpose. The message here is, go online as much as you can because we're going to be using it online if we can.

We also asked the parliamentary staff, as we did the parliamentarians themselves, what alternative sources of information they are using. Clearly, the Internet tops the list, with 95% saying that's an alternative source they're using, followed by federal departments and agencies, 80% are using that, and caucus research bureaus at 61%. Once again I would emphasize that some of these things had to do with whether or not they're using these other sources of information. It doesn't speak to how much they're using them, but rather their sources. Those are clearly the big three that are out there now. The list goes on to online databases, the Library of Congress, and the National Library.

In terms of new directions, here is more evidence of embracing the online world. We once again used a five-point scale, where the red is totally agree and the blue is somewhat agree, all the way to the extreme of totally disagree. I'm just going to go through them quickly one by one. The first one is that more of the Library of Parliament's products and services should be automated. Two-thirds at least somewhat agree and a third strongly agree. No one is really disagreeing. The second is “I would like to be able to access most or all of the LoP's Collections online.” That also has two-thirds that agree, 43% strongly agree, and a quarter moderately agree. Numbers three and five on the list deal with providing information from, first, European and international media, and then providing more information from the U.S. media. For the international media, 43% agree, which is not many, and 18% strongly agree. That drops down to 29% for the U.S. media, which suggests that they probably get enough of that from other sources or from what the Library of Parliament is already doing. The one second from the bottom is “I would prefer to receive fewer references with more in-depth analysis or description of the contents.” Only a third agree. Most people were neutral. When you have high levels of neutral, we think of that as the proverbial shrug of the shoulders. It's not something that they feel strongly about.

In terms of overall conclusions, taking both of the studies together, the first one is that there is an unequivocal positive attitude on the part of its users toward the Library of Parliament, especially toward the quality of service delivery we have now. We do have convergence from all of the sources. We have it from the qualitative study that we did with the parliamentarians and from the satisfaction ratings and the open-ended answers from the survey of the staff. All of these things give us as researchers greater confidence that what we're reporting to you now is valid and that if we went to more people, it wouldn't change. Knowing the parliamentary environment, we also know that if there were parliamentarians who weren't happy with the Library of Parliament, we would have heard from them as well. So we don't think there is anything hidden there. We have great confidence in the convergence we're seeing here.

¿ (0955)

The language we've used for the recommendation is simply that there is a winning formula that's working right now in terms of service delivery and establishing a relationship between the Library of Parliament and its clients, and that should be maintained. In any future directions you're looking at, you should not lose sight of that. In the client satisfaction research we've done--and what we've done here is much broader than client satisfaction research--it's very rare to have assessments as positive as this.

The next one is that the library does have a particular challenge in making its products and services better known to parliamentarians and their staff. It's a difficult clientele to reach. We have new evidence of that in even completing the interviews we did with the parliamentarians. It was a challenge in doing that. It's a group, the staff and the parliamentarians themselves, that clearly suffers from information overload. There are different types of work styles and preferences.

The programs and services aimed at providing information to the public about Parliament are even more of a challenge simply because those services aren't readily associated with the library's services. They might think that they're connected with the Speaker's office, or they might be seen to be part of some other service apparatus. But they're not automatically associated with the library.

The recommendation related to that is that communications should be recurring and should use various media. Communicating with parliamentarians just through internal mail is not sufficient. We talked about a brochure that was sent out immediately prior to this research and the fact that many people didn't recall it. Much of that information doesn't get beyond the staff.

There is clear concern, expressed by both parliamentarians and their staff, that the library is under-resourced. They value the quality of the services and the depth of the information they're accustomed to receiving. There's a fear that the quality might be compromised if the library staff becomes over-extended with the challenge they're facing right now.

One of the things we'd have you focus on is that in planning for the future, the Library of Parliament should consider maintaining the same high quality of services and depth of information that's provided now and seeing that as more important to the users than offering new services. So you could provide new services and go in new directions, but that can be resisted if it's not accompanied by the maintenance of what's being provided now.

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): Why wouldn't you just ask for more money? Why would you call that a recommendation?

Mr. Stephen Kiar: Let's look at recommendation 5, which reads “Some Parliamentarians wished that the Library would receive more resources.”

À (1000)

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): Oh, that's good.

Mr. Stephen Kiar: Its services are too central to their work, especially for the MPs, for them to risk having the quality be diminished and the access reduced. It's a theme that has been consistent in what we've heard here.

I'll hop back to the fourth recommendation. If the Library of Parliament does plan to offer new services or introduce innovations, you'll want to reassure the present users that nothing has been compromised in what they're receiving now. Reassurance would be important. Otherwise, one of the first reactions they may have, which is what we saw, is, if they're going in these new directions, make sure nothing is compromised in doing that. That is the top-of-mind reaction people will have. So reassurance is important.

Many library users, especially among parliamentarians, do not make a clear distinction between the three branches and the services associated with each one. So the Library of Parliament needs to decide whether or not it should make a distinction between these branches and make them more transparent. The acronyms we use in the recommendation relate to the collections, if I can use that language, in the research services. For parliamentarians they're almost seamless now, and they should probably remain seamless. We're doing a lot of government research with various population groups. No one cares about jurisdictions. They care about functions and end results. The most effective way of communicating with people is helping them know what services help with the functions they have, rather than which one of the three branches internally provides the functions.

Given the distinct nature of the services offered to the public, there is no need for a similar attempt at making that seamless. They're seen to be quite distinct now. What's needed there is an awareness promotion of those services that are provided to the public by the Library of Parliament. As we saw before, the awareness levels for those services were lower than for the other services.

That concludes the presentation. I assume that we'll go straight to questions and answers.

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): That's good.

Perhaps I don't know the kind of work you do. I heard very clearly that people want things more and more online and that they want more and more things available. But somehow the recommendations have come at the status quo. Yet what we're hearing is that people wanted a real thrust forward in terms of electronic stuff. So I don't know how you can say that there should be a holding back on new services and innovation when obviously that was.... It's the binary nature of your recommendations. I don't understand how you come to that.

Mr. Stephen Kiar: If I can--

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): I'm supposed to be chairing this meeting. You can think about that question.

We'll take the other questions. Let's go to Deborah.

Miss Deborah Grey (Edmonton North, Canadian Alliance): You just asked him a question. Why doesn't he answer it now?

Mr. Stephen Kiar: Thank you. The answer was ready. The embracing of online was strongest among the parliamentary staff. It was still there among parliamentarians. It was realizing that we're going into a brave new world, so the Library of Parliament has to be open to the kinds of new technologies that are out there, without any specific recommendations, and has to make sure that those are user friendly, for lack of a better term. The thrust for online had to do with current services, not new services or products. It's a new way of providing current services and products, but it wasn't a new product line. That's the distinction I would draw. It's not talking about the Library of Parliament being engaged in entirely new areas of activity, but rather looking at the areas of activity they're currently involved in and providing a more online environment in dealing with that.

À (1005)

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): My co-chair has a supplementary, but I want to ask a question first. How can you make a recommendation like that without having anything costed out? Did you not understand that parliamentarians actually think that things happen by magic and that they don't actually give a damn where it came from? Their staff are the ones who actually have to do the beavering to get this stuff on the member's desk.

Mr. Stephen Kiar: In terms of the costing out, we are involved in research across all manner of subjects, so we'll always use language such as you should consider or you should reflect upon, just to provide a pointer for certain directions forward, but we never will be doing the cost-benefit analysis, because that's beyond the mandate we have for virtually every project we do.

In terms of the parliamentary staff doing all the work, I know that. Did I say all the work? I take that back. I'll change it to doing an awful lot of this work. When it comes to them accessing the information and providing you with the tools you need to do your job, I am aware of that. For the services and things like that, we kept the discussion with the parliamentarians at a higher level, because they weren't interested in that. When we started to talk about specific services, they often said, my staff knows about that. They'd say, I haven't heard any complaints. So that told them that was still working well. But they--

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): They hadn't asked.

Maybe we should have Mr. Finsten and Mr. Paré at the table, too. That might help the committee work better on these questions.

Go ahead.

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin): I'll just follow up on Carolyn's point. I'm surprised at the lack of constructive criticism. There probably have been some specific suggestions. It's a feel good report. It does reflect, I'm sure, the information, but it's a feel good report. But there are some interesting figures. For example, there's the fact that only 12% of parliamentarians regularly use what I think is the major service of the library, which is research and analysis, and nearly half of them state that they very rarely or never use it. There are a number of figures here that should have been pointed out. I think we should receive some constructive criticism. Even if you're satisfied with the product, there are ways to improve it, and we don't see that here.

Mr. Stephen Kiar: First of all, when you ask a user group to provide suggestions for improvement, those suggestions are often very thin. In all of the client satisfaction work we do, we ask the question, what suggestions do you have, if any, to improve the quality of service you've received related to...? It could be employment insurance or student loans, those types of things. In every instance I mentioned there and more, over 50% don't give you any suggestions. The suggestions they do give you are very general. They're things like more communication and quicker service. How I've tried to express that to my clients is simply that they're usually not sitting out there thinking about how your service can be improved. We're catching them. If there's something obvious, then they'll identify that. Other than that, they're not sitting there thinking about how the Library of Parliament services should be improved. So that type of feedback in a quantitative exercise tends to be relatively thin whatever the service is.

The second part of your question mentioned the people who aren't using the research services and things like that. I'll again point to one of the limitations of the study. We weren't able to go just to the staff who we knew should have been the research users. We went to a broader group. Not everyone has that as their job. So if you have 50% or 60% using the type of service, I'm not sure how to interpret that, because I'm not sure what that number should look like. For me, it has to do with the actual survey sample, the universe of parliamentary staff that we don't know about, that lets us understand what that number should be. We asked, is this part of your function, and do you use the Library of Parliament? We saw that there was only a 5% gap for the research services and the collections services, and I think it was in the 10% to 15% range for the services to the public. That shows you that most of the people in the offices are using the Library of Parliament services that they think would be part of their job.

À (1010)

Miss Deborah Grey: I agree with your point about costing out, Carolyn. Given the parameters, which I'm going to ask you about in a minute, it's very difficult for a survey company to come up with what the costing out is going to be. That's someone else's responsibility. If that had been part of your parameters, then you should have, but--

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): No, I was talking about the recommendation.

Miss Deborah Grey: Regarding suggestions from people, I think that just the time and trouble people took to do the thing is phenomenal. We talk about our staff, and they do a great job at that. You looked at the discrepancies among parliamentarians. I think the true answer probably is that, basically, we're technologically illiterate and we're glad someone in our office knows how to do all this kind of stuff, although I have learned to do e-mail. So I'm quite pleased with myself.

Who gave the parameters for the poll? You didn't just dream this stuff up on your own. How did it come to be?

Mr. Stephen Kiar: Do you mean parameters in terms of whom we went to?

Miss Deborah Grey: Yes.

Mr. Stephen Kiar: We responded to the Library of Parliament's statement of work. It wasn't intended to be a client satisfaction work, but when you're looking at service delivery, you always have to ask that. It was really to provide some sense of how they're doing now and the role the Library of Parliament plays in parliamentarians' thinking and the direction in which that should evolve.

Miss Deborah Grey: Did you work collaboratively, then, on the questions?

Mr. Richard Paré (Parliamentary Librarian, Library of Parliament): Yes, a group of directors of the library worked with the firm to prepare these.

Miss Deborah Grey: Good.

What percentage of the collection is online now? I saw that one of the recommendations was a whole lot more of that.

Mr. Richard Paré: If I referred to PARLCAT, I would say maybe 10% to 15%. But that's just off the top of my head.

Miss Deborah Grey: Obviously, the goal would be to have more and more.

Mr. Richard Paré: It depends on the demand. We will see. We don't plan to digitize the whole collection. We are only doing certain parts of the collection, such as the clipping file, because it is very difficult to keep these collections in the long term.

Mr. Hugh Finsten (Associate Parliamentary Librarian, Library of Parliament): If I could just add to that, all of our research publications are online.

Miss Deborah Grey: We do just grab Quorum and read it wherever and whenever we can.

On page 7 you talk about services for the public. Of course, I've been around for a while. I had no idea that the Library of Parliament reserves seats for question period. We do that through our office, obviously, if folks are down. But for large groups, I didn't have a clue on that.

Mr. Richard Paré: The visitor services section will do that.

Miss Deborah Grey: There's this whole idea of information overload. We really don't have a sweet clue as to what's going on. But it's good that we can admit it, Carolyn.

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): And we can.

Miss Deborah Grey: My final question is, do the library staff know about these findings? Have they been sent around to them?

Mr. Stephen Kiar: Yes.

Miss Deborah Grey: I'm going to recommend that we write a letter to the staff of the library to let them know that we think they're a bonus and that they're doing a great job. I'll sign that letter with you, Carolyn, if you do that. Otherwise, I'll just write them myself.

Whose office did you work in? I remember seeing you around.

Mr. Stephen Kiar: I worked with Céline Hervieux-Payette, who's a senator now. It was way back when.

I actually ended up working in Trudeau's office. When he retired, I couldn't.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Miss Deborah Grey: Thank you very much.

Thanks, Carolyn.

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): Monsieur Gagnon.

[Translation]

Mr. Marcel Gagnon: Thank you.

I am also impressed with the study you have described. It is extremely detailed, and you have put a great deal of time into preparing it and consulting with your clients. But unlike Senator Morin, I have some questions about the constructive criticisms on the study.

I am quite shocked that so few of the services you offer are being used. I am in a good position to understand this, because my party's popularity is only 6 per cent in the polls. If I was not a member of this committee, I don't know whether I would be aware of the services you can provide me with. I also wonder whether you are planning any measures to publicize your services so that people are aware of them.

For example, the person before me said she had just learned that you reserved places for question period. That is something I did not know either. Could those services be made more available to members and senators, and could we be more informed about the ways in which we can use the Library? For example, could you come to our caucuses and tell us about the services you can provide? It makes no sense to leave such excellent services relatively unused.

Our staff is already overloaded, and it would be excellent if we could find better ways of gathering information. This is the sort of thing I am wondering. I know the kind of work that colleagues in my party do, and I will try to talk to them about this.

When we come here as members of Parliament, we find there is a vast amount to learn before we can become efficient. The training provided for members could include a session to show the excellent services the Library of Parliament provides. Do you think that is a good idea?

À (1015)

Mr. Richard Paré: I will answer that question, if I may.

As you were saying, Mr. Gagnon, and as Ms. Grey said as well, this is one of the surprises our study revealed. We thought people were more familiar with our services. We will certainly take a fresh look at this issue, and come up with a communication plan.

As Mr. Kiar said, parliamentarians are a special client group as far as communications are concerned. There are extremely busy, and frequently overloaded with information. It is therefore difficult to be certain that information genuinely gets their attention.

We are already preparing for the next Parliament. We will offer to meet with caucuses. But that time, we will have a full communication plan.

One of the things we may not be doing is provide sufficient follow-up with new parliaments. We take it for granted that people receive all the information required and know what they need to know. But we should go further, and the result of this study will certainly encourage us to do so. We will include more in-depth follow-up in our plan.

Mr. Marcel Gagnon: It's hard to imagine just how lost you can be when you first arrive in Parliament. I was fortunate enough to have been a member of the Quebec National Assembly for nine years, so the set-up was not completely foreign to me. Nonetheless, you still have to learn the system all over again because everything is different. It's only after a certain period that you realize you have failed to use some excellent services which were available.

Senator Morin raised the issue of bias. That is surely a prejudice on our part. However, your answers lead us to believe that our perception of bias is one of the reasons why we use the services less. So it is very important to point out that the Library of Parliament has a duty to be completely impartial.

Mr. Richard Paré: Well, as you said yourself, this is a prejudice. One of our most basic values is to provide non-partisan services. The Library has always operated that way. I have been with the Library of Parliament for 22 years. Before that, I was with the Library of the National Assembly, and as you know, being non-partisan was part of the Library's core values.

However, the perception may still be there. Here, I am thinking about a comment made about requests that were not answered satisfactorily. But I can assure you that whenever an answer is unsatisfactory, we contact the people concerned immediately to ensure whenever possible that corrections are made, the answer is improved, and that the reasons for which clients were dissatisfied do not recur. This is something we always do.

As for partisanship, I can tell you this: to my knowledge, in 22 years, there have been one or two cases of partisanship. It is extremely rare.

À (1020)

Mr. Marcel Gagnon: Thank you.

The Joint Chair (Senator Yves Morin): I would like to come back to what Mr. Gagnon said.

As a new senator, one of the things I was completely unaware of is the efficiency of the Library of Parliament. This is one of the best-kept secrets around. I became aware of the work the Library does gradually, as people spoke to me about it. In my view, you should organize an information session for new members and new senators—in any case, several tend to be appointed at the same time—and tell them what you do, and what you can do for them.

It took me a while to learn the ropes. I was a little intimidated at first. When you don't know whether you can request certain services, you tend to hesitate. It took a few months for me to work up the courage to submit my first request. Perhaps that is unusual. In any case, I fully support the comments made by Mr. Gagnon. I believe that some people never use the services because they simply don't know the services are there. I also have a second question.

[English]

Mr. Kiar, you did a survey of parliamentarians and their staff. It would have been interesting to have done a survey of the staff of the Library of Parliament. They're involved. They're the troops who are working in the trenches here. Would you consider doing such a survey in the future? I think that for the committee it would be extremely interesting to have the results of that.

Mr. Stephen Kiar: Usually, it's not me who answers about using their services in that way, but it has been done in the past. We do understand that when you're trying to get a view of services, you try to get that 360° view. It's a missing component. Here they went to their client groups and covered the waterfront quite effectively with that.

I want to come back to the suggestions. In the report there are about five to seven pages of feedback from the parliamentarians themselves that have to do with suggestions and new directions. If you were to take the time to read it, you would find that it tends to be at that level of generality that's not quite action oriented. Some of them mention greater visibility, more frequent contact, and more resources. It tends to be that issue I mentioned before. They're not doing their thinking for them. So it stays there. It often isn't constructive criticism in the way of this is what we need to do. It's not at that level.

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): Senator Forrestall.

Senator Michael J. Forrestall: Thank you, Madam Chair.

With regard to the issue of bias and concerns about regionalism, I've been a little concerned about that, particularly back in the days when we used to sit here in this room once a year to discuss matters with our predecessors. I've been concerned about it, but it has occurred to me that the bias was very natural. If the bias weren't there, then I think we might have to wonder if there maybe is something seriously wrong. But the bias, of course, is numbers. There are more here than all the rest of us put together. So bias is natural. There was a cultural language bias, which we have gone very far in the last 25 years to overcome. We've made tremendous strides, but we're not there yet. If there were no bias, I would have to wonder. We're dealing with very intelligent people. I'm not concerned. I find a little prejudice to be healthy, and I wouldn't be alarmed about it at all.

The evolved role of some pretty damn dedicated and highly qualified people at our committee level has done much to improve the level of work we're putting out. The House suffers from, what did we do yesterday that we couldn't have done last year or next year?

I find that the committees in the Senate that I sit on are extraordinarily well staffed. The Senate committees I've chaired, such as the transport committee, have some highly qualified people. In fact, they're so qualified and they command such a high level of salary that I can't afford to hire them on my meagre amount of money. I suppose that if I had the money, we wouldn't use you.

From what MPs and clients have said, is there anything to suggest that down the road we don't have to examine the relationship between senior research and the legislative assistance and members of Parliament's and senator's offices and the staff here?

À (1025)

Mr. Richard Paré: I'll start, and then perhaps Hugh will jump in. We do our best to find the best expertise to serve both the Senate and the House. If we were losing specialists to the Senate or to the House, we wouldn't be too much concerned because they will continue to serve Parliament. The concern we have is when we lose the specialists to the private sector or to other government departments. This is what sometimes creates some difficulty for us. We always try to find the best candidate when we have a position open. Then we develop them to work as a team. That is why they are so good, as you said, because they work as a team. They have their scope of knowledge in their area, which they can share with others. On this committee we have two of our excellent research officers, and they can share things from a different perspective. So that's the way we do it. Should we change that? I don't know.

Sometimes committees hire specialists from outside. We understand that. They need very specific knowledge, or they hire people to write a report. Sometimes these people are very good. But they don't have the understanding of the chemistry between the House and the Senate. It takes time to understand that. This is the difference. Sometimes we are asked to supplement and to help, and then that is the way we work. We are always open to working with people coming from the outside, both in the Senate and the House, and ready to cooperate with them. Should we have more specialists with the Senate and not less with the library? I don't know. I wouldn't pursue that too much. I think that we have the minimum to provide you with the best service you expect from the library.

À (1030)

Senator Michael J. Forrestall: I've often wondered whether a system of very brief internships, for example, would be a good idea. It might help to send them over to some distinguished member's office for six months of hell and then bring them back, or to take my Joe Varner--I'm his instrument; he's not mine--into your milieu for six weeks or six months, whatever it takes for him to properly understand how he can best serve me, the Senate, the Parliament, and the people of Canada through proper usage.

Mr. Richard Paré: This could be done through a training program, which we could develop eventually, to help whom you want to.

Mr. Hugh Finsten: There are obviously different groups of staff with different roles on the Hill. There's the staff in the member's office, the staff in the caucus research groups, and the staff in the library. Of course--

Senator Michael J. Forrestall: You leave that research group alone. They're prejudiced, biased, and unholy. And I love them. I can't bring myself to that level of bargains, so somebody has to do it for me. So don't touch them.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Mr. Hugh Finsten: But each has a different role. Our role is as a consulting group of non-partisan people with good knowledge in these different areas. It's a little difficult to start mixing them up and suggesting that maybe some people should go into one of the other areas for six months because then they might not understand their role in the other area. Obviously, our service is open to talking to the other services in terms of our role and how we do our research. But if you put them in these other roles, there might be some confusion as to what their overall role should be.

Senator Michael J. Forrestall: I'm not telling you to put one in my office. Put them not so much in the Senate offices but in a member of Parliament's office.

In terms of research, you remember that 35 or 40 years ago they couldn't get a member of Parliament to walk through those doors looking for help. They were terrified. Now we've made great strides. I think we can go much further in refining that help. If I could reduce the work of my principal research assistant in an area by 30%, then that would affect my productivity almost as much as a pay raise would. Maybe there's another way we could piggyback.

I won't ask you formally, but, informally, you might keep it in the back of your mind to try it as an experiment, perhaps at two stages of a member's career--early on after his first election and upon re-election, just for six weeks.

It won't hurt your people. They're disciplined, and they're good, and I thank you for them. I thank you generally for the help over the years.

Miss Deborah Grey: You're not recommending that Richard lower his staffs' salary so that you can afford to snap them up, though.

Senator Michael J. Forrestall: If I had your money, I wouldn't be moored to this.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Senator Michael J. Forrestall: No, I wasn't suggesting that at all. I was just trying to find some way to make it better, to demonstrate that certain prejudices--

Miss Deborah Grey: And cross-pollination.

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): I have a question on the bias piece. It's something that has been bugging me for a long time. That is the role of consultants. Obviously, committees are their own masters. If a committee hires a consultant, you can pretty well determine what the report is going to say just by whom they hired. If the library doesn't have some ability to temper it or to work with them and show them how parliamentary reports are generally done, if that report then comes out biased as a parliamentary committee report, it reflects badly on the Library of Parliament. Should our committee look at a recommendation such that the utilization of consultants by committees should be subcontracted through the library, so that there's a relationship that says we have a certain standard to meet? If it goes out as a parliamentary committee report, it looks as if the library did it, and that's where I have some concerns.

As all of you know, I also have some concerns around e-consultation. If that ends up being outsourced such that we cannot make sure that the questions are legitimate and that they're not leading questions, instead of ending up with something that could help Parliament, we could end up tainting it and having that little glimmer of bias augmented.

I talked with the co-chair--and this is mainly for the committee rather than the witnesses--about this committee preparing something, maybe not a report to Parliament in the spring, but at least a letter to the two Speakers with some of the things we learned from Stephen Coleman last week and from the witnesses today around some of the values that underpin the number one recommendation of the consultants today, which is, whatever you do, you must not undermine this good thing, the reputation of the library. If people are thinking that it's under-resourced, we may need to look at that in the fall in terms of real numbers. But there are the principles around making sure we have the money to do the job properly, the principle of some sort of oversight capacity by the library for parliamentary reports, and the in-house capacity, which Stephen Coleman was very clear about, that if we're going to move on this e-consultation, it can't be outsourced to somebody who doesn't inherently understand how impartial Parliament must be in the way we craft questions and all of that. If the committee were willing, maybe we could ask the researchers to craft just a few of the things that come from this report and from Coleman's by the time we rise in June, and then we can struggle with it as a committee. I think that as a committee we should do something with your presentation. We should at least be able to explore adequate resources and these really serious values that underpin the work we do and the work we're not able to do without the reputation of the library backing us up.

Were there any other questions or concerns?

Are the librarians overworked? Do you know that? We have our little job as the advisory committee. Are they one-armed paperhangers and--

À (1035)

Mr. Richard Paré: We are working in the area of information management. We are always overworked, because so much information is becoming available that we have to manage.

I just want to mention one point about the e-consultation. I think that the manner of support should also include the House and the Senate, because they have a role to play. So it will be a common goal in this area, in my view.

I won't comment on the research. You are right when you say that we have sometimes hired specialists from outside, but it's not often. It's exceptional when we do that.

À (1040)

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): But the preface would be that you know you have this new need and you hire a specialist for a specific piece of work, or it could be subcontracted to you and paid for by a committee. Maybe we should explore how that could be done.

Mr. Richard Paré: You mentioned this document that you want by June. I want to mention that we have the intention to submit a document to the committee before the next estimates with some of the demands that we'll have. This is part of our short-term plan.

The Joint Chair (Ms. Carolyn Bennett): We thank all the witnesses very much.

You must have really gone after these people to get that high participation rate. Thank you very much for the hard work you did on that.

The meeting is adjourned.