Thank you, Madam Chair.
Mr. McDougall, I would like to come back to the very beginning, when you were describing the system at the request of my colleague. There is one thing I don't really understand, and it has to do with transferring votes once the quota has been determined. The surplus is transferred to the individual who has ranked second. His excess is transferred to the person ranked third, and so on. Subsequently, you start the process all over again starting from the bottom.
I would like to present you with a scenario. Supposing we are talking about a candidate for a Senate seat from Quebec. Quebec is very large and we all know how expensive it is to visit all the communities, particularly in Northern Quebec. A person might wonder what the point is of travelling all across Quebec to meet with people and get as many votes as possible when, in any case, the quota is only 555 votes, for example. All the candidate has to do is make sure he or she will receive 600 or 700 votes, without having to go up to Northern Quebec. The candidate may decide just to stay in Laval, the area he or she knows best, and get the 500 votes there.
What is the logic behind this idea of transferring votes from the top-ranked candidate to the one in second place, and from the second-ranked candidate to the one in third place? Doesn't that take away from the democratic nature of the process, as we were talking about earlier?