Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank all my colleagues.
I'm sorry I missed all the other testimonies today. This is one of the times I greatly regret being the only MP for the Green Party. I had to take part in the debate in the House on the Paris agreement.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here this evening. This is very interesting.
I'll start with Ms. Dassonville.
While you were talking I was remembering a proposal that used to be put forward in every Parliament by a mutual friend of the chairman and mine, Charles Caccia, the Liberal member of Parliament for Davenport from 1968 to 2004. In every Parliament where he had a chance, he put forward a private member's bill to make voting mandatory, but to have the ballot have an option for “none of the above”. When you said “none of the above”, I started thinking that I've heard this before somewhere. It would not surprise you to hear this never passed our Parliament despite being put forward repeatedly by Charles Caccia.
In looking at mandatory voting, I think that certainly would be something a lot of voters would find empowering, to know that they didn't have to spoil a ballot. They could make their views clearer.
Have you turned your mind at all to the idea that if we did have mandatory voting, whether we should have it on a Saturday, a weekend day? We heard not from a witness who was actually invited to the committee, but from one of the open-mike participants who talked about it in Australia and said that the mandatory voting election day became a great family event. People congregated. Communities were involved. I don't know if you've looked at the social cohesion aspects of how one organizes a mandatory voting day.