Thank you, Madam Chair.
I think, in all fairness, this is an excellent discussion today and certainly a good kickoff, if I can call it that, to our deliberations about Bill C-20 and the future of the Senate.
I'm quite interested in the process that led the government to come forward with this bill. In particular, Mr. Minister, perhaps you could enlighten us as to some comments made earlier about the process for actually going about selecting senators, were this bill to come into force. You yourself were remarking earlier about how this differs from the first-past-the-post system, which most Canadians, and certainly most parliamentarians in the lower House, in our House of Commons, are familiar with.
Could you explain a bit more about the process of how this particular system, which seems on the surface to be quite complicated, came about as the preferred method in the bill and why we didn't just go with something that all Canadians are more familiar with, which would be the first-past-the-post system?