No, but given that one of our key things is travel, it's a relevant point to raise, I think, when you look at the motion in front of us, that they actually travelled. When they went to Ukraine to study democracy, they travelled. When we're doing Canada's democracy, we don't travel. That's the problem. But I will move on.
I would like to move to another example of how to do this back in Canada. In Quebec, the second largest province in our nation, they looked at—guess what?—a draft bill replacing their elections act. It sounds familiar. But what they did was a little different. It was interesting; they had the assistance of eight citizens randomly chosen after a public call, nine MLAs on the commission, and they began their work with the Chief Electoral Officer.
Imagine that; imagine the starting point being the Chief Electoral Officer. What a concept. But that's exactly what they did. Then they put out a call asking people for their opinions. During the general consultation, 374 briefs were transmitted, and 1,747 people took part in the online consultation.
By the way, in terms of timeframes, Chair, this would be November 1, 2005, so nine years ago. That's a pretty short period of time given the history of the country.
As well, 6,200 paper copies of the information booklet were sent out in French or English to citizens who requested it, and 379 groups and individuals appeared during the public hearings at the National Assembly and—wait for it—across Quebec. There we go again with all these crazy people taking the notion of letting people have a say about their election law to incredible extremes, such as actually taking the committee there.
I think the rest of this piece will get me in trouble, so I won't go there.
Speaking of reviewing and talking about the different component parts of Canada, I made some reference to New Zealand and talked about how they did things. This is kind of shocking as well. The Portfolio Committee on Justice, Legal Affairs, Constitutional and Parliamentary Affairs of Zimbabwe held public hearings beginning on September 12, 2011, in 12 cities. That's Zimbabwe.
By the way, what is it with the Zs today? New Zealand, Zimbabwe: we have Zs everywhere. I don't know whether that's the secret to it. But I mean, Zimbabwe...Canada. Zimbabwe holds public hearings to let their citizens in, and I look at all of the cities that are listed, but I figure I'll be pushing my luck if I read those, so I won't. But I will make reference to the—