Thank you, Madam Chairman. Thank you very much, Mr. Mayrand,
and your team. I have lots of questions, but very little time.
Of course, I am from New Brunswick, a bilingual province where many people are proud to be Acadian. My concern is that, when an election campaign is being held across the province, in every riding, this new system will compromise the representation of Acadians or Francophones in my province. I am obviously well acquainted with my province. I share the concern expressed by Mr. Bélanger, as spokesperson for Franco-Ontarians, and I know he is also concerned about this.
You raise a very interesting question that goes to the root of why the government is bringing this legislation in. What are we going to have, at the end of the day, if we have two houses of Parliament fully elected by popular vote? Is there going to be a clash of the Titans? I note, just by way of background—because I'm getting to your information obligation, or the one you now don't want, I guess—that if we were to inform the public about this new process, we would be saying, would we not, that your selected Senate will have the same power as the elected House of Commons?
Are we going to put in the information that it's a selection process and that ultimately the selection is made by the Prime Minister, so that it's not quite equal to the House of Commons? What kind of public relations nightmare can you envisage if we left the duty of information and, as you say, of what may be perceived as advocacy? What would you advocate? That the two houses at the end of the day have equal power? How would you wordsmith that, and is it a nightmare you're not looking forward to?