Okay?
Go ahead.
As I said previously, just at the time the cabinet was seized of its discussion with respect to the inclusion of Canada in extraterritorial...[Technical Difficulty--Editor]
Is it okay now? We'll try.
At that time, we were seized of the request by the Italian government to hold an election that would provide for Canada to be an extraterritorial constituency. I want to say that because it is our expectation that host governments in Ottawa would request such a privilege of the Canadian authorities.
At that time, we felt it would be useful to clarify the policy as a whole and not adopt an ad hoc response to these things. That's why we proceeded to cabinet at the time. We established the policy, but given the few days--literally--in which we received this request, we thought it would be the right thing to do to allow the Italian authorities to proceed with this system.
Since then, through diplomatic relations, and oftentimes bilateral diplomatic relations, we have communicated the new policy adopted in 2008. In light of the requests that we've received recently from France and from Tunisia, we thought it might be useful to have a circular, which we sent to all of the embassies, and yesterday we met with a quite well-represented diplomatic corps to re-emphasize the policies.
I wish to underline that we were quite confident that the approach of Canada was well understood, because as I said earlier, just in 2010 and 2011 we have received no less than 37 requests by governments to hold absentee voting. In fact, Mr. Chair, if you would like, I would be pleased to circulate the list of those countries and the particular elections in case.... Mrs. Martin has brought that list.
We think the Canadian approach with respect to elections in Canada is quite well understood.