Thank you very much, Mr. Dewar. You hit the nail right on the head. You said it wouldn't be helpful to open up the Constitution at this point or on this particular issue, and I would suggest to you that it's unnecessary to do so, inasmuch as we have legislation that doesn't overly complicate the question but is very doable.
You asked if this was in any way tied to our reform or to changes in the Senate. It's not. It's independent of that. It's an incremental change and an improvement in our particular system. And you're quite correct; the individual who wrote that article, Mr. Milner, said that what we have is a flexible fixed-date system. And this is what I indicated to you earlier. It's a little more complicated within the British parliamentary system to actually fix a date for an election. It's a little easier in.... Many examples were given to me: Latvia, Mexico, the United States. Those are slightly different systems that don't have a confidence convention built into them, as we have. So ours is flexible but fixed-date at the same time.
With respect to the campaigning, we'll have a front-row seat to see how it goes in the province of Ontario. They have an election scheduled for October of next year, and we'll see whether they spend the whole year campaigning. My guess is that they won't.
You have a situation now where if you think the election will be any time between three and five years away, you could indeed be campaigning all the time and worrying about that. But in terms of nailing down things like campaign offices, ordering signs, and all that, I think it can be done in a much more orderly way. Yes, there will continue to be rules that govern distribution, publicity, and fundraising. All those things will continue to be in effect. But overall, I think this is an improvement on the situation we have now.