Good evening, everyone. This is meeting number 26 of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform.
As you know, we met in the summer to receive testimony, in many cases from academic experts and other stakeholders. Now, as of yesterday, we started our cross-Canada tour, which is a three-week tour that will take us to every province and every territory.
Earlier today we had the same kinds of hearings in a town outside of Winnipeg, St-Pierre-Jolys, and here we are tonight in the city.
We have three witnesses: Professor Paul Thomas, professor of political studies at the University of Manitoba; and two witnesses from the Council of Canadians with Disabilities. Each witness will have 10 minutes. I believe Mr. Sosa and Ms. D'Aubin will be splitting the 10 minutes.
The way we function is that after the presentations we will have one round of questions. Each member can engage witnesses for five minutes, and that five minutes includes the member's questions and any answers to those questions. If I have to close the segment after five minutes or so, please don't be offended. It's just that we have time restrictions, and it's just the way things work procedurally at House of Commons committees. After the round of five-minute questions, we're going to have an open-mike session, and I think we'll probably have quite a few people coming up to the mike, which is fantastic. It looks as though that will last about an hour and 45 minutes, depending on how it goes.
We'll get started with Professor Thomas for 10 minutes.