I heard Mr. Mayrand talk this morning about the six months' minimum that he would require, and I generally would agree with that.
One must remember that the experience of the 1992 referendum is easy to trace. There's a lot of documentation at Elections Canada, in the media, and elsewhere, so a lot of the provisions of the statute could easily be replicated.
There's a lot that would have to be changed. As I said, one would be the constitutional reference, if it's not a constitutional question, as well as references to the Canada Elections Act. There are only 40 sections to the Referendum Act. When you hold an election, there are 300, 400; I don't remember how many. In any case, there were references that would need to be refreshed.
The reason we were able to succeed was that it was such a high political imperative at the time. Initially, most of the members of government—the prime minister and others—did not want a referendum. That changed when the provinces started to say that they had to hold a referendum. People started to get concerned about what the provincial question would be. Would it be the same? By holding a federal referendum, the question was the same.
In terms of the ability to carry it out, it was because I was able to take the Elections Act, the organization of Elections Canada, and just make it work for the referendum. We went at it as if it were an election, with the same returning officers and the same hiring patterns. Everything was just replicated. That simplified matters within a reasonable six-month period.