Thank you.
While I appreciate the argument being made by our colleagues in the Bloc for having a spring date rather than the fall date, I must say that very convincing arguments were made to us, both in written materials as well as by witnesses, that one of the great advantages of a fixed election date is to capture the attention, engagement, and voting—eventually, if not right at that moment—of students. We have this tremendous group of new electors every year who have the opportunity, if the date is properly set, to learn about and be involved in the elections themselves and have mock elections.
From my own experience, Mr. Chair, having a constituency, Vancouver Quadra, that has I think the third largest university in the country, I see this very dramatically in the various elections I've been involved with. When the elections have been at a time when the students were not distracted by exams and were in session, the vitality and I think future promise of our vibrant democracy demonstrated by their enthusiasm have been overwhelming—much greater, I have found, than in members of the general population.
Some of the arguments that were made about being able to properly plan, in a curriculum for a year, mock elections and other information that would encourage students to become interested in these issues and active in elections were very convincing to me. October was named for the reason that students were back, they were settled, but they weren't in the middle of exams, nor were they fully engaged at that time perhaps in their term work.
For the April date, with the greatest respect, I understand the reasons that have been put forward, but I have a real concern. Certainly in British Columbia, university exams begin in the early to middle part of April, which would mean they would be distracted throughout the whole campaign period. I have no doubt they would get around to voting even if they had exams at the time, but it's the real energy they bring to the campaign that moves me to prefer the October date.