—see it, with your great experience in to and fro—
Yes, and I'm sure you'll have no trouble handling it.
It's this. I felt that I had heard maybe a bit of a contradiction to some of your previous thoughts and statements when you were responding to Mr. Reid's question earlier, so I wanted to ask you about that and explore it a little bit, it you don't mind.
When you spoke to the public round table on proportional representation that was organized by the New Brunswick commission—I think that was in 2004—you made a statement that started by saying that you generally weren't a fan of referendums but felt, and I'm quoting, that
...when restricted to establishing the democratic rules of the electoral system applicable equally to all citizens and when the question is preceded by a thorough deliberative process involving the citizens themselves, it seems to me such a referendum fully measures up to the democratic aspirations and values of classical democratic theorists like John Stuart Mill.
It seems to me that at that point in time you were indicating that a referendum might be something that, on this type of question, you would certainly be in favour of, and I sense a different viewpoint today.
I'm wondering whether you could explain that to us a little bit. It seemed that you agreed with the idea of a referendum when you were working to convince Canadians to proceed with electoral reform and consider electoral reform, but now that we're having serious discussion about electoral reform, you may not share that view any longer.
I'm having trouble understanding and reconciling that. Could you try to answer that?