Thank you very much.
As I said, I find this discussion fascinating. The one thing I like about this bill is that I think it's a great trial balloon, allowing us to begin a discussion. What really worries me about it is if it's an actual piece of legislation. There are so many unthought-out areas in terms of how we could actually bring this forward without it blowing up in the government's face.
Elections Canada raised serious questions. They talked about an extreme risk of failure. I think those were their exact words. There's a lack of planning in terms of how to deal with financial limits; there are no limits on what they're campaigning on. There's the issue of third-party participation in an election, with parties signing up as third parties, and potentially federal candidates signing up as third parties. There's also whether or not, if this is running in conjunction with a federal election--they didn't seem to think it would be possible to even deal with a provincial election because of so many of the complications--having certain candidates with unlimited fundraising capabilities could interfere with the legitimate election campaigns that are going on. By “legitimate” I refer to House of Commons campaigns, because this is a consultation process, and it's going to be very hard to define.
So I'm concerned that there are just so many vagaries in this bill that when we actually get it out in the field, it would be a bit of a disaster.
I want to ask your opinion, because you talked about it being problematic with Quebec because Quebec has regions defined for senatorial posts.