Thank you, Mr. Chairman and honourable members for being here and for being so receptive to such a diversity of views. I hope that I can contribute out of reactions to four points that I've heard.
My name is Colin Soskolne. I'm a professor emeritus in epidemiology, which is the science that underlies the formation of rational public health policy, so I'm coming from that vantage point.
In public health sciences, we have a discipline called health promotion, and we use social marketing and health promotion techniques through focus groups. You might think of employing focus groups as a quicker way of getting feedback from large constituencies.
The principle of transparency is something that I've placed a lot of weight on, and I refer here to Dr. Kam's position about the trade-offs that he was talking about. If we were to ask ourselves the question, in anything we do, as to whose interests are best being served, then I think we all agree that we want to serve Canadians' interests best, not those of the elected politicians of the day. If we ask what the trade-offs are for each, the pros and cons of each of the different options before us, that makes each option more transparent to the public and I think that could be very helpful to give people insight because it is a complex area.
Regarding surveys or phoning people, Mr. Canseco made a point, if I heard him correctly, that his surveys were accessible or the people who participate in his surveys are people who have access to computers for online participation. I submit to you that in the old days of doing surveys, only people who had telephones were accessible to participate. This is hardly representative of the larger public. We have to be careful on that point too, just to be cautious.
The final point I'll make is that I haven't heard any word about compulsory voting in this conversation. I'm just wondering if that isn't worth including at some level.
Thank you very much.