I guess our concern wasn't the concern of Imagine Canada. I recognize that they have a more difficult task than we do, because they represent a broad constituency of member organizations. They have to look right across the spectrum.
I think our membership approach at the Red Cross is compatible with the provisions of the bill. There are some unique facets of our membership structure in the bylaws. Maybe I'll find out differently when the bill is passed and I have to sit down and start redoing some of this, but my initial view of it was that it wasn't going to cause us a lot of concern.
The concerns I have are really more generic. I think there's more of an emphasis on member rights now than there has been in the past. There are more avenues of access by members to what's actually going on in the organization. The requirement for maintaining membership lists is more stringent in the new legislation than in the current CCA.
All of that is to satisfy a sense that members who want to become more involved in the governance of their organization--at least to check, run, or monitor what's going on--should have access to more information. I think the more information you give people, the more room there is for conflict and dispute. There probably will be more tension between the director level and the membership level on certain issues.
I think the concern was...or my concern is--I guess I could speak for a lawyer--is that I'm not a big fan of resolving these things in courts. It's too slow, too expensive, and usually it doesn't lead to anybody coming out terribly happy.
I guess I was trying to perhaps push in the direction of saying, well, in terms of administering this new law, maybe the government should be putting more emphasis on structures to facilitate dispute resolution, without having to go down that road. That can be done informally. It doesn't have to be in the legislation. But from my point of view, it would be nice if Parliament, in the legislation, were to at least give a nudge or some support toward government taking a less court-based adversarial approach to resolving things that I think will come out of this legislation.