Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, this is the “hash brown” scandal. I'm trying to remember the name of the hacker. It's something unpronounceable.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  This has happened. I work in engineering. The saying goes that everything has a mean time to failure. Everything will eventually break. That means the security of your party's systems, my party's systems, and all the party systems will eventually be broken into. It's just a matter of statistics.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In almost every other organization that voters and Canadians interact with that have to meet privacy laws, there are privacy risk assessments. An external auditor would come in and say, “Here are some deficiencies that we'd like you to address. Here are some others that we think are adequate.”

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Most Canadians don't see it that way.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The time allocation approach is unfortunate.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The whole thing? It's a tough decision. I'll withhold my comment on that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It was a tongue-in-cheek bit of sarcasm. Obviously, I am here. I feel well enough prepared for the questions you'll ask, so let's continue.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I myself was brought into the loop a little over 28 hours ago.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In my area of work, which is more private sector than public, there's always a question of risk versus reward. Is the risk of further delaying the execution of this bill worth the reward of ironing out some of the kinks or problems within the bill itself? The Green Party of Canada would rather see this bill in force for the next general election than it not in force with modification.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, it becomes risk-reward. If some of the modifications don't require huge administrative overhaul within Elections Canada, I would say that statement is accurate. If it requires significant changes to how Elections Canada is operating and the assumptions they're running on today, I would say the risk is not appropriate.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Unfortunately, the burden of that decision falls on you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I am not a constitutional expert but from what I understand, there are implications for third party groups in that regard.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's correct.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We exist in a society with many different ages of majority. You need to be 16 years old before you can drive a car; 16 years old before you can enlist in the reserves; but 18 years before you can drink or vote. I find it an interesting dichotomy where you need to be older to be able to drink and vote than you do to enlist, to potentially fight and die in the name of your country.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Right. It becomes a classification question. The bill, as it currently presents, presents that there are three different times that election spending can fall into: writ, pre-writ, and none of the above. It seems to make sense to us that there should be only two categorizations: when a writ is dropped—basically during the writ period—and when it's not.