Yes, there are one or two members of this committee who have expressed reservations in the past about leaving too much discretion to the Chief Electoral Officer, so you may not be alone in that sentiment. But we are going to have him in on Thursday, I think, and we'll get a chance to ask him this question. Perhaps his response will indicate whether it's necessary to take the additional steps you've suggested of legislating it, or whether we're safe. I simply throw that out because I can see how, if you read this, you could get worried. It is a relevant concern to have.
I wanted to ask Mr. Nothing about a number of problems he described, which struck me as being very legitimate. I confess to not having a great deal of personal experience with aboriginal communities that are, I guess, fly-in communities, or reachable only by air. I was trying to think of a parallel situation from my own experience, and the best thing I could come up with—and this is probably not a very good parallel, but it's the best thing I could think of—is that in the area I represent, we have rural routes with a large number of houses along a road, for example, where mail is addressed to John Smith, Rural Route 3, Smiths Falls. That means there's a particular route the postman drives. There are at least three of those routes, and Rural Route 3 is the one this particular postman drives, and John Smith lives on the route. Of course, the problem is that you have John Smith Jr., John Smith Sr., and then there are cousins who live down the road, whose names are also John Smith--I, II, and III, and those kinds of things.
It's a problem for us, I can tell you. Lately, to solve the problem, Canada Post has encouraged us to use 911 locator numbers posted in front of each house as the address, and we're gradually resolving a problem.
In thinking this through, it occurred to me that you must get mail on reserves where people have the same name, and they must have some way of distinguishing whether a piece of mail is for person A, person B, or person C, all of whom have the same name. I'm just wondering what that way is. Perhaps we can try to incorporate it, to ensure that at least one of the problems you're referring to is resolved.