Procedure and House Affairs committee  Just quickly, I would say that we should save that and get into that as a whole separate meeting. There is so much to talk about on that.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, there are.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Blaikie, I would just suggest, and this is the attitude and behaviour of election agencies across the country, to make voting as successful as possible. This also comes from the last few years, and did come up in the debate around the Fair Elections Act. I wouldn't say that electoral fraud is non-existent, but it is extremely limited, so looking at anything for how to make voting more accessible is worthwhile, and potentially experimenting with.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'm sorry about that. Maybe you'll throw me in a couple seconds. What I wanted to comment on, because I'm watching the time fly by—and I'm just going to put it out there, because I don't know if I'll be given the time following this—is that the recommendations of the CEO were framed around a lot of the weekend voting and on how we could better access poll workers.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's one of the recommendations, I guess, that Elections Canada would like to see to help them access voting stations. I know Mr. Alghabra had some concerns initially about whether or not it should be on Monday or something like that. I think Canadians have no problem switching to Saturday and Sunday.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sabreena, do you want to go ahead?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Are you going to have time for me to respond to that, as well?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  To explain the relationship with Elections Canada—which we're grateful for—last year Elections Canada contributed around $2 million to the student vote program. That would put us somewhere in the range of under $2 per student. This is more than just active voting; in some cases this is a month-long learning experience.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It doesn't really matter, because it's not up to anyone here. I think public health officials will play a role. We've seen three elections over the last couple of months and people still turned out. I think as you saw with Mr. Boda, they estimate that turnout only went down 2%, so maybe that's my quick response.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thanks. Ms Sahota, how much time do I have for that?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We just conducted parallel elections in the three elections that took place—in B.C., Saskatchewan, and the municipal elections in Nova Scotia. We missed New Brunswick because it was the first Friday and the return to school. Here's an interesting comparison. In British Columbia—which, in the last federal election had over 200,000 kids participate and over 80% of all schools registered to participate—we had a smaller percentage of schools register.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'll comment in relation to what we've done rather than just a general commentary. We agree with you. One of the philosophies of our approach is that an engaged teacher can engage their students. Last year, we had the capacity, which is rare, which means money, to gather and physically train, typically over an afternoon and an evening and then a full day, somewhere in the range of 1,850 teachers through 17 different events across Canada.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure. I can. Also, I might, through some of these answers, bring it back to some of the things that I think might be useful for the purposes of this committee. There are probably a few things that are most relative to our success in growing our school numbers across Canada. Fixed election dates really help.