Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Mayrand has indicated that he had an hour-long conversation with the minister before last summer at some point. I know from my studies of five other countries that in a couple of them there are rules requiring that the head of the national election authority be consulted rega

Procedure and House Affairs committee  You can do more on the front end in terms of improving registration. I didn't know the number, about 27 or so, whatever it was. I'd have to think some more about that. I will get back to you on that. I'll give you a comment on that in writing.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Well, you're never going to have a perfect election that's conducted without any administrative problems that arise. One of the problems is it all happens on one day and it often involves the use of hundreds of thousands of people who have been trained in a very short period of

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I think it has happened in Manitoba over the last two general elections. According to the experts in and around Elections Manitoba and me as a commentator, I have not encountered any problems with it. There are alternatives to vouching, but I think there are sufficient safeg

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I believe that information was offered by the CEO of Elections Canada and by Mr. Neufeld in his report. I think a number of studies suggest those are the groups that tend not to vote as often and have to rely on the device of vouching.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm not an expert on the methodology used for the compliance audit. I know there has been an ongoing disagreement between the minister and Mr. Neufeld over the significance of the findings, and there have been some exchanges in the media between Mr. Poilievre and Mr. Neufeld wher

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'd be happy to do that. I would just say that if you go back several decades, people voted without any voter identification and there was more trust that nobody would be engaging in voter fraud, as it's become known. So we've changed in our culture of trust within Canada.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much for the privilege of coming before the committee. I submitted a brief earlier. Tonight, I'll just touch upon several points that were contained within that presentation, and then I'd be pleased to answer any questions that might arise. I start with the obser

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I can, Mr. Preston.

Government Operations committee  That would be a very good thing. I know the Senate is not regarded as a legitimate body in the 21st century when it's appointed by the Prime Minister. On the other hand, senators often have distinguished careers in business or politics. For a decade I was the Duff Roblin Professo

Government Operations committee  This is a subject near and dear to my heart. I'm really interested in how we produce useful information for members of legislatures. What is relevant information is partly in the eye of the beholder. You have 308 members of Parliament working in different parties. Their perspec

Government Operations committee  I think that would be the case. They're called committee secretaries in the Australian Parliament, but they're a head of a branch, really. Each committee has a number of staff members and these people are well-educated, well-qualified. Some are even Ph.D.-level people, such as th

Government Operations committee  Yes, there is a choice to be made there. You could go the library research branch route. They have very competent professionals who could give good support to the committee. On the other hand, we created the Parliamentary Budget Officer as part of the amendment to the Federal Acc

Government Operations committee  One of the things I have observed about the supply practices in provincial jurisdictions is that many of them have a limited number of days. They allot a certain number of days and hours to the examination of the estimates; it's a finite period of time. Then, the government has i

Government Operations committee  I just think that the way it is now, with the budget speech much anticipated and the pre-budget consultations going on in the finance committee of the House of Commons and so on, there's all that rush to put the budget to bed and get ready for it. It has become the biggest politi