BILI Committee Meeting

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THE STANDING JOINT COMMITTEE ON THE LIBRARY OF PARLIAMENT

EVIDENCE

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OTTAWA, Monday, November 25, 2024

The Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament met this day at 11 a.m. [ET] to consider the mandate of the committee.

Senator Mohamed-Iqbal Ravalia and Mr. Angelo Iacono (Joint Chairs) in the chair.

[English]

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Good morning. My name is Senator Ravalia, a senator from Newfoundland and Labrador. I have the pleasure of co-chairing this meeting with my colleague Angelo Iacono, who will be joining us shortly.

Today, we are conducting a meeting of the Standing Joint Committee on the Library of Parliament. Should any technical challenges arise, particularly in relation to interpretation, please signal it to me or the clerks, and we will work to resolve the issue.

Before we begin, I’d like to take a few minutes to allow members of the committee to introduce themselves.

Mr. Carrie: Colin Carrie, Member of Parliament for Oshawa.

Mr. Albas: Dan Albas, Member of Parliament for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola.

Mr. Liepert: Ron Liepert, Member of Parliament for Calgary Signal Hill. This will be a short introduction, since we don’t have any members of the government here.

Mr. Soroka: Gerald Soroka, Member of Parliament for Yellowhead, west of Edmonton.

Senator Prosper: Senator Paul Prosper, Nova Scotia.

Ms. McPherson: Heather McPherson, Member of Parliament for Edmonton Strathcona.

[Translation]

Mr. Desilets: Good morning. Luc Desilets, member of the Bloc Québécois.

[English]

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): I will also ask the members joining us virtually to introduce themselves.

[Translation]

Senator Saint-Germain: Good morning, everyone.

[English]

Ms. Koutrakis: Annie Koutrakis, Member of Parliament for Vimy.

Mr. Maloney: James Maloney, Member of Parliament for Etobicoke—Lakeshore. Don’t worry, Ron; I’m watching.

Mr. Long: Good morning. Wayne Long, Member of Parliament for Saint John—Rothesay. Sorry I’m not there in person, Ron. Free the beer, Dan.

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Thank you very much, and welcome to you all.

Today, under its mandate, the committee will be hearing from Christine Ivory, Parliamentary Librarian; Marcus Pistor, Director General, Research and Education; and Johanna Smith, Director General, Information and Collection. They will be speaking to us today on the implementation of the Library of Parliament’s 2023-28 Strategic Plan.

On behalf of the members of the committee, I thank you for being here today. I understand that you’ll be delivering some opening remarks. Following your presentation, members of the committee will have some questions for you. Thank you for being here.

Christine Ivory, Parliamentary Librarian, Library of Parliament: Mr. Chair and honourable members and senators, thank you for the opportunity to speak with you today. I appeared before this committee in June as you considered my nomination, and I’m honoured to be here today as the tenth Parliamentary Librarian.

[Translation]

As the joint chair said, I’m here with two of my colleagues. I’m joined by Marcus Pistor, Director General, Research and Education, and Johanna Smith, Director General, Information and Collection.

The client experience is a priority for me and for the Library of Parliament. We welcome these types of opportunities to appear before this joint committee and receive your feedback and advice on how to improve our products and services.

Today, I would like to outline the initiatives in our 2023-28 Strategic Plan. Please note that this plan was developed during Heather Lank’s mandate as Parliamentary Librarian. However, I was part of her executive team during the development of this plan. I firmly believe that these are the right priorities for the library. I’m confident that we can build on previous successes in order to keep moving forward and bring this plan to fruition.

The opportunity to share this plan at the start of my mandate will also help me confirm that it meets your expectations. It will also give us the chance to adjust initiatives and priorities as we go along. A strategic plan is never set in stone. We’ll strive to update and fine-tune the plan to meet your needs.

Our strategic plan is based on four pillars. These pillars are to provide an outstanding parliamentary client experience; offer expanded access to the public; foster an inclusive, healthy and safe workplace; and demonstrate organizational excellence.

Given the time constraints today, I’ll focus on the first two pillars. I’ll talk about our efforts to meet your needs and the many ways in which we must also provide services to Canadians so that they can access their Parliament.

[English]

Our approach to providing an outstanding parliamentary and client experience is to continuously evolve and improve our products and services to meet your needs. We do this by seeking feedback, consulting with you and your staff and by taking a coordinated approach in how we manage client experience.

To meet your evolving needs, the library recently added research capacity, with a focus on parliamentary diplomacy and your international work, and we created a centre of expertise on data analysis and visualization. In September, we launched a new dashboard that provides census data by region. Our plan in future years is to continue to reinforce our capacity in the field of data analytics to support your research needs.

We also recently established a working group to better understand the benefits and the risks of artificial intelligence, or AI, and we’ve developed guidelines to orient library employees in the use of AI. We are now at a point in our strategic plan where we are testing and evaluating several tools to determine whether they can be leveraged in our work.

Providing inclusive and barrier-free products and services is also a key part of our offerings in an outstanding parliamentary client experience, and the library is committed to greater diversity, equity, inclusion, or DEI, and accessibility for all our clients. As such, we’ve conducted accessibility reviews of our physical branches so that we can make them more accessible, and we have improved DOME, which is our internet for parliamentary clients, to make the content more universally accessible.

We are committed to reviewing and adapting current products and services or creating new ones to enhance the integration and intersectional analysis, including Indigenous perspectives and knowledge. That also includes efforts to enhance the in-person visitor experience through a DEI and accessibility lens.

[Translation]

You may be familiar with our ambassador program. Employee volunteers provide orientation sessions for parliamentarians and their staff. This program has been rethought and redesigned in order to provide programming and support throughout a Parliament, rather than just for a new Parliament. We’re continuing to assess this flagship program. Our strategy is to work closely with the Senate and House of Commons administrations to ensure a coordinated and seamless process for welcoming senators and members of Parliament.

As I said back in June, your feedback is valuable and a priority for me. In my first week in office, I wrote to you and to all committee and association chairs, whips and Senate group leaders. I offered to arrange meetings to obtain your feedback. I’m committed to regularly engaging with, consulting and seeking input from parliamentarians throughout my mandate and to always following up on recommendations.

[English]

Another key element of our strategic plan is to work on behalf of the Senate and the House of Commons to connect Canadians with Parliament. One of the most visible ways we do so is through our visitor service offerings. As you know, we currently offer guided tours in three locations: the Senate of Canada Building, the House of Commons at West Block and seasonal tours of East Block. In summer 2023, we opened our fourth visitor offering, Parliament: The Immersive Experience. This multimedia attraction on Sparks Street brings Centre Block to life in vivid details, offering to a generation of Canadians an opportunity to experience the splendour of the iconic building while the physical one is closed. If you have not had the chance to visit, I encourage you to do so. It’s really something special.

We also find other ways to bring Parliament to the public wherever they may be. We recently produced new video tours of the Senate of Canada Building, the House of Commons in West Block and East Block. We have done so by setting a new standard for multimedia accessibility. The videos are designed to be accessible to the broadest public possible with the standard format, as well as closed captioning, sign language versions and one with audio description.

Our educational resources are designed to help individuals of all ages learn about the role, history and architecture of Canada’s Parliament, so from videos to games to lesson plans to virtual reality, we offer these resources to support educators and students alike. Just last week, we launched a redesigned teacher resource portal with searchable content that is geared to different grade levels, and as part of this strategic plan, we will be refreshing and redesigning one of our flagship educational resources, Our Country, Our Parliament, which is available both online and in print. We will also be developing new series of publications for the public.

Offering expanded public access to Parliament also includes the library’s collection, and we’re making every effort to digitize and make accessible unique historical documents so that they can be available to the public through our catalogue.

[Translation]

We would never be able to fulfill all these objectives and priorities without the support and dedication of our talented and committed employees. That’s why fostering an inclusive, healthy and safe workplace and demonstrating organizational excellence remain two key pillars for the organization. We’ve dedicated positions and resources to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. Our priority is to develop and implement strategies to build a workplace conducive to representation.

We also focus on integrating intersectionality and Indigenous perspectives into our work. We provide mandatory employee training on accessibility and GBA plus. We’ve added Indigenous resources to our collection. Our guides have met with Indigenous parliamentarians during their training. We’ve also recently incorporated Indigenous perspectives into the Teachers Institute program, including meetings with the Commissioner of Indigenous Languages and the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

We still have a great deal of work to do. We’ll continue to build our skills in this area as we update our diversity, equity and inclusion strategy; a reconciliation plan; and a strategy for consultation with Indigenous communities.

[English]

While we have many other planned initiatives as part of our strategic plan, I wanted to share a few highlights. In the months to come, we will announce the eleventh Parliamentary Poet Laureate, and we will be developing and launching the new Parliamentary Visual Artist Laureate program. We will continue to expand public access to library resources, including the digitization of many historical ministerial speeches. We are working to distribute a questionnaire for all of you parliamentarians to give you an opportunity to update your Parlinfo profiles, as the database is useful to the public and to researchers across Canada and beyond, and we will ramp up our planning for the visitor programming in the Parliament Welcome Centre to open in Centre Block.

In anticipation of an election by the fall of 2025, we are also preparing for a new Parliament, and we are recruiting volunteers from among our employees to serve as new library ambassadors who will be ready to welcome new and returning parliamentarians.

[Translation]

My colleagues and I look forward to answering your questions. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you this morning.

[English]

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Thank you very much, Ms. Ivory, for that update. If I could commence the questioning period, let’s see if we have any questions online.

Mr. Long: Thank you and good morning. Ms. Ivory, thank you very much for your presentation.

I just took note of your mentioning about the virtual tours set up on Sparks Street. Obviously, my office is on Wellington, so I walk by that pretty much every day, and I’ve seen it. I’m kind of curious about it, but I really didn’t know a lot about it, to be perfectly honest. And I heard your words — and thank you for that — but can you just tell me how you are promoting it so people know it’s there? How are you promoting the experience? Can you share a little more about what’s available when you go inside those doors? Is it free of charge? Thank you.

Ms. Ivory: Thank you for the question. I’ll start answering, and my colleague Mr. Pistor may have additional information on the promotional aspects.

First of all, the important thing, it is free of charge to all who want to participate. It uses the same reservation system as for tours, so anyone from the public who wants to visit has to book through our reservation system, but it is free of charge.

It has two elements. One is a more traditional exhibit space with panels and information with some interactive features to explain Parliament and the history of Centre Block, and then people enter what is an immersive experience in a room that gives a three-dimensional or almost four-dimensional aspect to being in Centre Block, in the House of Commons, in the Senate, in the Library of Parliament, with some testimonials and some highly visual immersive experiences. The idea is that people can really understand the history of the building and the architecture and feel that they are in the space, when, really, for decades, people have not been able to be in Centre Block.

In terms of our promotion, we have done ads. The same way whenever we promote the tour program, we promote the immersive experience. We also have people on Sparks Street who can answer questions. Our guides are there to explain what it is.

I might turn to Mr. Pistor in case there are other elements that I’m missing.

Mr. Long: Mr. Pistor, sorry, just before you turn it over. You mentioned, Ms. Ivory, about ads, and maybe you can elaborate on this, but do you use social media that much? What social media platforms do you use? Thank you.

Marcus Pistor, Director General, Research and Education, Library of Parliament: Perhaps I could answer that. Just to start, we had about 68,000 visitors in the first year of the Immersive Experience, so we’re very happy about those numbers. We advertise with tourism providers, in hotels, so in the brochures that you see at the airport and hotels. We do some social media advertising on platforms like LinkedIn and, I believe, also on Facebook, but I would have to check on that, and we can get back to you with more information about which social media platforms we advertise on, if that’s okay.

Ms. Ivory: Just maybe to add to that, we are on Instagram, X, and we do use Facebook and other social media platforms, so we do use those ways of reaching out, certainly, at the launch, to advertise those and other products as well.

Mr. Long: Thank you very much.

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Thank you.

Mr. Carrie: Madam Ivory, congratulations. It looks like you’re hitting the ground running, which is always good. You did mention in your opening the strategic plan. You do have a strategic plan in front of you that you didn’t develop, but, from my understanding, you were on the team. Is that going to cause you any additional challenges to implement it — the fact that you didn’t actually come up with that entire thing? And who is involved in developing it?

Ms. Ivory: Thank you for the question. I would say it does help that I was part of the team that was developing it, and I was aligned with the vision that Dr. Lank put forward. The strategic plan is obviously not developed by one single person, so the entire executive team is involved, as well as employees. We consult with all of the library employees to feed into that plan not only to make sure that, from the ground up, we are aligning with what employees want to see in the plan but also to make sure that they understand the vision and can get behind it.

As I think I mentioned in my opening remarks, the strategic plan is not meant to be a static one-and-done type of document. It’s a living document. It’s a living plan, and so I think the four strategic pillars that were identified in 2023 are ones that arguably could be there for the eternity of the Library of Parliament, and it’s what we do within them that enables us to tweak and align with your priorities.

An outstanding client experience is something we will always want to have as an objective, and then it’s more about what we emphasize and what we do to ensure that that’s true for all of you, so collecting feedback and thinking how to tweak, how to anticipate new priorities, topics, policy issues and the way committees, associations and individual parliamentarians are working. I think there’s enough in the plan that we can continue to evolve it, and I don’t feel constrained by it in any way.

Mr. Carrie: What is your opinion on the current level of funding that you have? Do you feel that the Library of Parliament can fulfill its mandate with the current level of funding that you have?

Ms. Ivory: Every organization would tell you that they could do more with more, but we are known to be fiscally responsible. We are fortunate at the moment that most of our teams are fully staffed. We had an influx of money two years ago so that we were able to add to our research capacity, and we are now fully staffed in terms of our analysts. That has made a big difference to the support we can give to committees and associations.

Some of the future pressures include the Parliament Welcome Centre. That’s a large project, for which we will need additional support. It’s something that’s beyond what we currently have in our programming.

Mr. Carrie: What has been the average annual increase of your budget in the last three or four years? You mentioned that you had significant volunteers. I was just wondering, as far as full-time equivalents versus volunteers are concerned, how many people do you have now, and how does that compare to, say, four years ago?

Ms. Ivory: In terms of the volunteers I mentioned, those are employees whom we ask to do the ambassador program in addition to their regular work. They are not additional volunteers whom we bring in from outside the Library of Parliament — just to clarify that point.

We have about 430 full-time equivalents, or FTEs, not including the students who are hired in the summer and throughout the year for the Parliamentary Guide Program. I’d have to look at the numbers in terms of the increase in staff over the last few years, but I might have those numbers and can look. Apart from that, in terms of your other question related to the increase in the budget, it changes from year to year. Last year, we had a larger increase, which was for economic increases. It was the only request we made through the Main Estimates, and, as you know, the negotiations with unions and decisions on economic increases are beyond our capacity to manage, so we asked for those economic increases to be able to cover that pressure on our budget.

We can send those numbers to you in writing — the increase in the FTEs over time.

Mr. Carrie: Yes, we are always curious about that.

I want to ask you about artificial intelligence, because everybody is talking about that now, and the implications for research. How do you envision the role of artificial intelligence in all the work and amazing research that you do, things along those lines? How will that be a tool? You mentioned that there are always positives and negatives with that. Given the importance of artificial intelligence, how do you envision it with regard to implementing it into your work?

Ms. Ivory: Thank you for the question. It’s definitely something that the library has spent a lot of time exploring over the past few years, and we will continue to do so.

As a knowledge organization, we have to know what is being done in the field of AI. There’s a lot of discussion on generative AI. Obviously, we are looking at what that means, but for us as a library, there’s a lot of capacity through machine learning and artificial intelligence that is not generative but that can help us with a lot of other parts of our institution. There are many possibilities with AI to help with metadata. For us, in the back end of our collection, it could help make our collection and catalogue more searchable for you and for the public.

There are ways to work with artificial intelligence to counter generative AI by using AI to look at validating sources. There’s also AI in many technology systems, aiding us to sift through data. There are ways for us to explore some of the uses of artificial intelligence that are not related to developing the product so that we can continue to provide searchable, validated information.

We are exploring both options, but there is a lot in terms of non-generative AI that we can work on. I don’t know if my colleagues want to add anything to that.

Johanna Smith, Director General, Information and Collection, Library of Parliament: I could add that a part of where we are now is making sure that our staff are well trained and aware of how AI works and is interplaying with the research that they do. Guidelines for staff and the way they are approaching the environment are also crucial at this point.

[Translation]

Mr. Desilets: Ms. Ivory, thank you for your remarks. They were clear, brief and much appreciated. First, I learned that you provide a multitude of services. I didn’t know about all this. We use research extensively as members of Parliament. At the Bloc Québécois, we all agree on this. The results are fast and the resource is relevant. We greatly appreciate it. I would like to congratulate the entire team.

I have an initial question. When it comes to all the documents and literature reviews at your disposal for research requests, can you tell me whether the equivalent resources are available in English and French? I’m thinking of the catalogues in particular.

Ms. Ivory: Thank you for the question. I think that I should get back to you with specific statistics. We’re developing the collection on an equitable basis between English and French. We’re also ensuring that our analysts and librarians have the necessary access. We need to look at the data. Also, for parliamentarians, if something is missing from the collection, you can certainly make a request.

We sometimes face challenges in terms of the available resources when we use third parties for databases. We must often find out what’s out there. There’s less agglomeration of resources in French. We sometimes need to find them on a piecemeal basis, but we always figure out a way to do so. Whenever we need a resource for our purposes or for you, we find a way to obtain it. However, if you want a percentage and a number of titles out of the 900,000 titles in the collection, I must get back to you with that figure.

Mr. Desilets: This could be useful if it doesn’t require a huge amount of work.

I would like you to tell me the following. How will the 2023-28 Strategic Plan affect current and future requests from parliamentarians? Will it have an impact? Do any aspects of your 2023-28 Strategic Plan have an impact?

Ms. Ivory: Certainly. Our first pillar, the client experience, is all about improving the services provided. If we receive feedback that things take too long or not long enough and that not enough or too much analysis has been done, we can fine-tune our approach to service development.

Another feature of the 2023-28 Strategic Plan is our focus on ongoing training for our employees. This includes the analysts who support you, the librarians and technicians. We must also provide training on how to write in inclusive language, in relation to GBA plus, for example, but also on new topics. That way, our multidisciplinary teams can really stay up to date on the latest developments. This training must also help them to better support you. We have many resources that help us train — and continue to train — our employees to better support you.

Mr. Desilets: I have a final two-part question in line with my colleague’s question about artificial intelligence. Obviously, we’re all concerned about this. The first part of my question is the following. What limits to the use of artificial intelligence do you see in your organization? Second, I would like to hear your thoughts on the ethics of artificial intelligence. How will you ensure that the data obtained through artificial intelligence is compliant and usable?

Ms. Ivory: Thank you for the question. That’s why we were one of the first legislative libraries to develop guidelines for our employees. We know that these tools are readily available and we wanted to impose some guidelines. Our guidelines already clearly state that, if someone is using artificial intelligence for your research products, this information must be specified somewhere.

Something must explain that artificial intelligence was used. We’ve discovered that most people don’t use artificial intelligence for their own research given the many biases involved. From an ethical standpoint as well, we developed these guidelines to prevent artificial intelligence from being used for non-compliant purposes. Since we must look so hard for evidence of this artificial intelligence, this currently means even more work for the analysts. However, as I was saying, I believe that this aspect is constantly changing and we must continue to explore it. We would take great care before saying that we’ll use an artificial intelligence system.

Mr. Desilets: That answers my question, unless you have something else to add. Thank you.

[English]

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Thank you.

Mr. Albas: Madam Librarian, thank you for being here today and answering our questions.

As someone who uses the library a lot, first of all, let me start by saying your team at the Library of Parliament has saved Canadians from more bad ideas from my office and has taken many good ideas and made them great ideas. I use the resources quite a bit.

I had a discussion with a newer member of Parliament who was brought in a by-election — not the most recent one — but it does seem to me, and it seems to be a proverbial thing, that I’ll have conversations with other members of Parliament, some long-time, some new, and they won’t know that there is a particular service that the library offers. It drives me nuts. That’s the basis of my line of questioning.

First of all, I believe you do briefings one-on-one with members of Parliament as they come in. That is great. I would suggest you do that and continue to do that. One of the things that I have always noticed here in this place is that we have many different groups that serve members of Parliament and senators, but there isn’t an ongoing engagement in a systematic way. Does the Library of Parliament do an annual survey to parliamentarians?

Ms. Ivory: Not yet. It’s something that we are exploring. The U.K. and Australia, for instance, do such surveys. We have been really making strides on the client experience to make it a more systematic approach, and I think that is one of the things — with a new Parliament coming — to have a baseline and be able to do a repeating survey where we can analyze from year to year. It’s something that we are exploring.

Mr. Albas: Yes, because the new member particularly didn’t know about Quorum. Every day, I receive my daily Quorum that outlines — for those who don’t know — a compilation of news stories in both French and English, and it is helpful for members to see what Canadians are reading in one concise volume. I don’t get to read it every day exhaustively, but it is a helpful thing.

Having a survey where you can ask whether they are aware of this service might even pique interest for them to ask you to please contact them and ask what this is. For many years, I didn’t know that PressReader was also offered, or that you can use it on your iPad to read newspapers and certain other international publications.

These are things I’m very passionate about. If you only have limited data going in, you only have certain thoughts going out.

Have you heard of Blacklock’s Reporter?

Ms. Ivory: I have.

Mr. Albas: Okay, it’s a family-owned accountability journalism outfit here in Ottawa. I have done an informal survey of my own, and there are about 42 Conservative members of Parliament, including myself, who receive that publication. I’m sure, through the other parties as well as the senators, there are probably a lot of people who subscribe to them.

I believe that an institutional licence where it could be included in Quorum every day would probably be very cost-effective. Have you evaluated whether or not that is something that, under your tenure, the Library of Parliament will look at?

Ms. Ivory: Having just been in the position for a month, I have not looked at this. I do believe that it was something that was looked at previously, and we were looking for a subscription with Blacklock’s, and there were some impediments. It’s something we could certainly look at again.

Mr. Albas: I would appreciate it because I have heard that because there was a case where Blacklock’s was suing, I believe, the Government of Canada for what they viewed as illegal sharing of passwords or of stories, the Library of Parliament decided not to go ahead with Blacklock’s. While I recognize that there’s a lot of money that is coming out of the pockets of members of Parliament to pay for this, and I would like to see that bill go down, I would also like to see the guiding principle of impartiality. I believe that lawsuit has been resolved, but I really don’t want us to be making the decision of what parliamentarians should have access to arbitrarily just because a government entity is being sued for access to their content. I’m hoping that with a new, fresh set of eyes and hands on the case maybe we can look at that.

Lastly, I want to talk about AI. I currently have the honour of serving as Joint Chair of the Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Regulations, along with Senator Woo. I want to, first of all, distance myself from my comments from anything of Senator Woo; he is his own person and is a delight to work with on the committee. Obviously, independent counsel Tanya Dupuis and her team are employees of yours; is that correct?

Ms. Ivory: Yes.

Mr. Albas: On the subject of AI, I know that the committee has long-standing issues with basic English-French translations, as well as drafting errors, like the use of the words “without delay” or “may” causes a lot of arbitrariness and often becomes the point of focus for our independent counsel. I just think a lot of this could be trained — whether it be a machine learning process or an actual artificial intelligence — for these basic things. It’s a small but mighty team, our independent counsel, and the Government of Canada has greatly increased the number of statutory instruments that are by law assigned to be reviewed by that committee.

If you are going to look beyond having general guidelines for AI — and this is my own idea; I have not talked to counsel or to Senator Woo at length about this — please consider doing a pilot project in that area. They are doing a modernization, and I just think that AI would certainly work to reduce the workload for the lawyers who are on there, given the number of files that they have to look at.

I will leave it at that. If you do have any response, I would love to hear it for the record.

Ms. Ivory: I could start, and I don’t know if my colleagues want to add anything. Thank you for the comments and the question.

On AI, this is something that we are very interested in and also working on with our partners at the Senate and House administrations. Could we build our own language model from the legislative procedural to what we do in research that would help us to have our own AI models to help in these cases, whether it be for the Scrutiny of Regulations Committee or other committees as well? I think it’s not something where we are ready now, but it’s something — that responsible use of AI and the benefits of using it where we’re using our own terminology — that, in the long term, we would definitely want to explore.

Mr. Albas: I believe this is being examined by some of our sister committees in other Parliaments. I believe there’s a conference in New Zealand or in Australia where their version of the Scrutiny of Regulations Committee is starting to move into this space. I’m not by any means saying that we need to lead, but I do know that as the Government of Canada continues to expand its use of administrative documents, that committee will continue to see a larger workload. We have to sometimes think smarter and not necessarily work harder all the time. Thank you.

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Thank you very much. I would just add a point that MP Michelle Rempel Garner has been very involved on an international level through the Inter‑Parliamentary Union. From their last meeting, they had a document produced on the use of AI. That might be something useful for you to refer to as well.

Mr. Albas: Thank you.

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Thank you very much for your comments.

Mr. Soroka: We are dealing with AI and new technologies, and that’s great. The problem is the misinformation that’s out there. I was intrigued or curious to know whether your department has actually had to increase staff or staff time to discredit a lot of the misinformation out there. I know I get a lot of stuff where I am like, “I know it’s not true, whatever,” but you always want to have proof. It’s almost one of those things, “No, I saw it on Facebook,” or, “I saw this here, and it’s got to be the truth. Why aren’t you doing something about it?” Is that consuming quite a bit of your time or your staff time?

Ms. Ivory: I can certainly start this answer, and I think both my colleagues may want to add, given that they are responsible for a lot of the research and reference requests that come.

I think we are seeing it, but we also see it coming from your offices. A lot of requests come in asking us to do fact-checking or to look at finding verified sources to confirm or clarify what may be coming from constituency requests or other requests. We’ve seen an uptick in the requests that are coming to us to help with that and facilitate that for your own work.

Then, certainly for our researchers, using verified sources and not relying on media are a huge part of how we train and ensure that our collection and what we have available to our analysts and librarians is there to make sure they are using those verified and academic sources, whether the topic is very much in the news with a lot of disinformation or misinformation.

It adds a layer. There’s a lot more also available on any topic to try to get to every element. Every aspect means searching a lot of different sources. It adds complexity to all of the requests.

I may ask my colleague because we are also working on training for our own staff and for your staffers related to disinformation. I don’t know if you wanted to mention something.

Ms. Smith: I think you have covered it quite well. The added layer is there for sure, and I think the additional steps that we take to make sure that anything we are putting out is reliable and valid, particularly in the Quorum clippings or news sources that we use, is one place where we pay particular attention, but I would say we are paying more attention across the board to the sources that we consult and acquire.

Mr. Pistor: The research products that go to the documents are peer-reviewed. We always have another pair of eyes on it, and they are approved by a manager with experience in providing research services to Parliament, and that helps, especially with the new staff, to understand what the standard is that we need to deliver for you in terms of reliability and accuracy of the data.

We have seen — and this has been going on for quite a while, as Ms. Ivory mentioned — an uptick in requests to validate information that you receive directly. Often your staff comes to us and asks us, and I think we are well enough resourced to do that because we have experts in all fields under federal jurisdiction. We know where to get reliable data to compare to whatever you are getting, for example. We are happy to provide that service, and it could be librarians or analysts, and we figure out how best to do that for you.

Mr. Soroka: That is great, and I’m not questioning the quality of your work. You are doing great work. I was just curious about how much time it’s consuming because I know anytime you are dealing with newspapers now, the sensationalism — like “Portugal quits this, or stops using this form of something,” and it’s just like, “All you did was read the headline. Did you actually read the article?” And it’s like, “Well, no, but . . .,” so you have to, I guess, discredit a lot of people.

Even after you prove that it’s not true, they’re still like, “Well, I don’t know. I saw it on Facebook, so I still question you.” How frustrating does that become, knowing the fact that you’ve proven or disproven that so-called reality in someone’s mind? How does that affect your staff even? Do they get frustrated dealing with this as well? Do they just roll with the punches, I guess, is the better way of looking at it?

Ms. Ivory: We are fortunate to have amazing staff who are dedicated and believe in the institution. I would say they roll with the punches. We are an organization that has provided research to parliamentarians since the 1950s, so we’ve had to evolve, from the internet and Google to now disinformation/misinformation. We are constantly evolving, and I think I mentioned the importance of our doing training and evergreening is key.

We talk about these things with our employees, with the managers, and they work through some of these issues, and we try to be there to support them when there are frustrations. Luckily, these things tend to be an evolution, so it’s not in a day that you are faced with this. You start to adapt to these new realities over time, and being open about these challenges with them and offering some training and support go a long way.

Mr. Soroka: I’m not talking about hacking here, for instance, but with technology, how it’s evolving consistently, are there some things that we need to be aware of that you might be thinking could affect the Library of Parliament or not? I don’t want to say “hacking” because we have good security systems, but is there some type of AI system that we need to be aware of to prepare for the future that could affect research or the documentation itself being valid?

Ms. Ivory: That’s a good question. Definitely, cybersecurity is a big concern for all of us, and we work very closely with our partners, particularly with the House of Commons, who provide the cybersecurity support to us.

We run our own application, so we work with our IT teams to ensure that we have the utmost rigour. And if we were — and we haven’t yet — to acquire any type of system that would provide artificial intelligence, that would be a very rigorous process: looking through our cybersecurity plan, validating with our partners, working with our legal counsel and consulting with cybersecurity experts through the government, for instance. We haven’t gone to that phase yet in terms of acquiring a system.

In terms of what’s out there for our employees to use that would be open-source, again, it’s more the validating of the information, the checking, the fact-checking. As we say, they would have to tell us that they are using this type of platform, so the manager would know and be extra cautious about it.

Mr. Soroka: You brought up something that sort of piqued my mind then, with open-source research or information that’s out there. Is there potential in the future that there will be limitations on what you are allowed to see or not allowed to see because of rules, regulations or laws that have been changed, with censorship or something like that? Is that a potential that could affect your quality of research?

Ms. Ivory: Thank you for the question. Projecting into a law that might limit our access to public resources, I can’t really speak to that. I don’t know what that would look like.

We do not, as I think the members here know, have access to government records unless they are public, so we have to rely on publicly available information. If that were to be limited in any way, it would definitely have an impact.

We do benefit from the fact that academic sources and others provide open-source data, but then we have to be careful about validating where those sources come from, the rigour of that data. When we do use those data points, we make sure that the quality assurance and the review are as best as we can do with that information.

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Thank you very much. I’ll now go to my co-chair.

[Translation]

The Joint Chair (Mr. Iacono): Congratulations again on your appointment, Ms. Ivory. You outlined your plan. I would like to hear more about any shortcomings in the Library of Parliament’s work environment that may need to be addressed over the next five years.

Ms. Ivory: Thank you. That’s a key question. We added a well-being pillar to our organization, because our employees represent our strength. We’re striving to support them through this plan. One of the shortcomings identified was the training plan. Employees wanted more training in accessibility, representation, diversity and inclusion. These aspects are changing throughout Parliament. For us, this means updating our diversity and inclusion plan both to increase representation in our organization and to ensure that our employees feel represented, that they see themselves in the institution and that they see themselves in Parliament.

The Joint Chair (Mr. Iacono): You shared some shortcomings with us. Could you also share the steps that you plan to take to address these shortcomings over the next five years?

Ms. Ivory: We have a great deal under way in terms of equity, diversity and inclusion. We’re currently developing mandatory training for our employees and a recruitment strategy in certain sectors and across the country. For example, we’ve already done this for the guides and we’re doing it more and more for the librarians. Moreover, for both recruitment and retention purposes, we want to provide opportunities for employees.

We must ensure that people have the tools to address the other shortcomings. We just talked about how our employees can’t do their jobs without the right tools. We must make sure that our technological information debt doesn’t grow. The Library of Parliament strives to keep up to date with its information systems. We must continue to do so. That way, people won’t have to spend their time resolving issues with an outdated system. People must have the latest tools to do their jobs.

The Joint Chair (Mr. Iacono): Do you have an update on the new parliamentary diplomacy section of the library’s research branch?

Mr. Pistor: Thank you for the question. We created this section last year to better provide research services to the chairs, but also to parliamentary associations. This expertise is truly unique to Parliament. It gives us the opportunity to work with you and with delegations attending international meetings. We have a manager and a team of eight people, research assistants and analysts who work exclusively for parliamentary associations.

[English]

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Thank you.

Ms. McPherson: Congratulations on your appointment and thank you very much for being here today and sharing this information with us. It’s very helpful.

I had some questions with regard to the teachers program and the teaching resources. First of all, the parliamentary program where teachers come and learn about the Parliament of Canada is really spectacular. I had dinner with some of the teachers just a few weeks ago, and it was a highlight of my fall. You spoke a little bit about the resources and how they are continuing to be developed. Are they being linked to provincial curricula, to the learning objectives within provincial curricula? That’s one question I have for you.

The second question was with regard to the diversity work that you’re doing, and I want to compliment you on that important work. Knowing that bringing in Indigenous perspectives, bringing in perspectives from the 2SLGBTQI+ movement is very important, how are you bringing those voices in? I know you talked about mandatory training. I know you talked about resources that are being developed. Are there any staff within the Library of Parliament who identify as being from those groups? That would be wonderful to know.

Also, are there are any resources being developed for alternative languages? I’m thinking of Indigenous languages — Inuktut, Cree, other areas. Thank you.

Ms. Ivory: Thank you for the questions. I’ll start with the Teachers Institute and the teacher resources. We do try to align with provincial and territorial curriculum. Obviously, it can be very different from one province to the other, so we work with a teacher advisory council of teachers who are former participants of the Teachers Institute, and that advisory council has teachers from all provinces and territories. Often, they are very involved with their own provincial departments of education.

They help us to align all of the resources and to validate the levels, and so then we try to identify resources that will work for the majority of curricula, making sure that we have resources at all of the elementary and secondary levels, and then we try to also do it in a language that will work for different levels, usually an average of Grades 6-7 language so that it will work in different curricula across the country. That is one way that we do so.

On the diversity questions, we do have representation from the various groups, and we do have a self-ID questionnaire for our employees, where I think the participation rate was around 66% or 67%. We do have Indigenous employees. We have employees who identify as 2SLGBTQIA+ and then other employees who identify through other diversity means. We also try to work with external experts, whether they be Indigenous scholars or other experts who can bring in that perspective and help us in the training or sometimes as part of peer review of a document on a topic to make sure that we have that information.

In terms of alternative languages, we have started to build, as part of our collection, resources to help learn Indigenous languages because we know that there is that need here in Parliament. We are working with the House and the Senate. As you may know, some committee reports have been translated into other languages. When our ninth Poet Laureate was Cree, if her poetry was written in Cree, we published it in Cree and also translated it into English and French. So we have done some things in alternative languages.

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Thank you.

Mr. Albas: There’s one thing that I’ve always wondered about, and I haven’t had the opportunity to sit on this committee before. I’ve mentioned earlier about how many research projects the Library of Parliament has given me, which I think is extremely helpful, as a member of Parliament, to understand an issue, sometimes an obscure one. For example, in British Columbia, the Columbia River Treaty is a very complex process, and when I became a new member of Parliament, I think that’s one of the first ones that I asked for.

What will happen from time to time is I will have a parliamentary researcher contact me and say, “The report X, I have been asked to do a very similar report, and there’s a section that I would like to draw from that to give to this other parliamentarian” — of course they never disclose names — “Do you consent?” Obviously, I’ve always said yes, but one of the things I’ve always wondered was, “Gee, I wonder what they asked?” I wondered if there was ever a thought process, because right now, as far as I understand, those reports do not get disseminated in any way, shape or form, of course, without the consent of members of Parliament.

Is there a possibility that some of that information could be, without attributing to a member of Parliament, placed on a website so I can take a look and see what other study areas other members of Parliament, perhaps senators, have had and which might stimulate my thinking towards some new research areas? Has that been considered, or is the library’s position that if an MP or senator makes the request, we keep that information essentially confidential forevermore?

Ms. Ivory: Thank you for the question. It’s an important one, and confidentiality is a very important part of our offering to parliamentarians, but obviously the topics may be recurrent. You could see, as you’ve mentioned, that many parliamentarians may request similar information.

The tailored and maybe the specific questions, the way it has been developed for one parliamentarian, we may not publish. But what we have done in recent years is a stream of publications only for parliamentarians that are working papers that are often built up from the fact that we notice several recurring requests for a theme, a policy issue, and so then from that research — because the research will have brought in various sources — our analysts will develop working papers that are made available to all parliamentarians. I forget the number now, but we have hundreds that are now available. That’s one way, without replicating the exact answer that may have been given to one parliamentarian or the other, for us to have some more general access to that research.

Mr. Albas: I have followed a lot of the working papers, and I do find that they are very authoritative, but that also means dull, often because they are somewhat sanitized from any possibility of different legislative reforms that might be initiated, et cetera.

All I would ask — and again, I’m only just a member speaking for myself here — is maybe to have a revisit of that. Perhaps if a previous Parliament, let’s say not the last one but the previous ones to that, if you were to publish the reports with consent, obviously, or maybe going forward indicate, “Unless you ask us for confidentiality, we will reprint two Parliaments ago what was requested so that MPs can take a look at the questions that were asked.”

Again, a New Democrat might look at a particular issue at a particular time or a Conservative might look at something later, but then someone else may come with a fresh set of eyes and say, “Oh, there is a gem in there.” I just think about the sharing of that information that is provided to us all by taxpayers within some realms of confidentiality and perhaps after a certain amount of time has passed.

Ms. Ivory: Thank you. That’s a very good point, and I think we will take that back and explore how we might be able to do that.

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Thank you.

Mr. Carrie: I think according to section 42.1(1) of the Financial Administration Act, every department has to do a review every five years. I’m just curious when the last review was done. Has the library ever been audited by an outside source?

Ms. Ivory: I’d have to check if that part of the Financial Administration Act applies to the library because we are under a different schedule as a parliamentary entity, so I would have to come back to you with that.

We do get audited for our internal audits, and we have reports on this. We are not audited by the Auditor General, as an example, because we are not a federal department, but we do have our own auditing where we have an external firm annually that audits our financial statements.

Mr. Carrie: So it’s an independent auditor who comes in and does it.

Ms. Ivory: That’s right.

Mr. Carrie: Thank you.

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): If that information could be fed through to the clerks and distributed amongst the membership, that would be great.

Are there any other questions? If I could then perhaps just close with a question. You’ve talked quite a lot about community partnerships and building on them and enhancing them. Like MP McPherson, I was very impressed with the teachers program, which I have now attended multiple times, and I think it’s one of the most rewarding aspects of my position as a senator.

I’m wondering if we could extend that to other programs, perhaps involving librarians, libraries and community leaders in more rural and remote communities that don’t actually have access to parliamentary activities, and have a similar showing, respecting fiscal prudence, of course.

Ms. Ivory: Thank you for your question and your comments about the Teachers Institute. We just celebrated the twenty-fifth edition, and we have been able to reach over 2,000 teachers, who then have an impact across their own careers, reaching students and other teachers. We have not explored specifically doing it for librarians, but we do include librarians from schools in the Teachers Institute, so that is one element.

In terms of other professions, we have not yet, so that could be something that we look at. What we try to do is have information that is available to other groups, and we do a lot of outreach to iSchools across the country, since we are also looking to hire librarians. Some of that work is also done in a more ad hoc way. I would say that we go and present to various faculties, whether that’s iSchools or political studies departments.

We have other ways where we are reaching out, but not in the same systematic way as the Teachers Institute.

The Joint Chair (Senator Ravalia): Thank you very much.

[Translation]

The Joint Chair (Mr. Iacono): Thank you, Ms. Ivory, Mr. Pistor and Ms. Smith, for joining us today.

[English]

There being no more business, this meeting is now adjourned.

(The committee adjourned.)