Thank you.
The last thing I wanted to raise is the subject of your opinions. You're the man who makes the decision whether to engage in prosecutions, which raises the issue of the information sheets Elections Canada puts out. I think that on the website there are currently 28 of these, or thereabouts, but I stand to be corrected. At their head they have a disclaimer, and back in another day the disclaimer used to say something to the effect that as long as one made a genuine effort to follow the interpretation that you have given on the sheets, one wouldn't be prosecuted by the commissioner of elections.
That has since been removed, and there's now a disclaimer that makes it very difficult to tell of what value the interpretation provided in the information sheet is. It says:
The views expressed in information sheets are not law and are not intended to replace the official text of the Act. How the Act applies to any particular case will depend on the individual circumstances of that case. Elections Canada reserves the right to reconsider any interpretations expressed in information sheets, either generally or in light of the actual circumstances of any case, and in accordance with continuing legislative and judicial developments.
That is a wonderful way of Elections Canada ensuring they're covered. But from my point of view, these things are close to worthless. This wouldn't be the case if, in your position as commissioner, you could look them over and then either indicate—ideally on the website, but if not, in some other form that's publicly available—that you agree with the interpretation and, therefore, that someone who made a best effort to comply would not be prosecuted by you; or say no, that you disagree and that Elections Canada ought to change the interpretations it was giving vis-à-vis whatever the issue happened to be.