To add to the discussion, Mr. Chair, Jamie has done a good job of recapping where the committee was and of the report we made back to the House. Looking around the room, quite a number of us had the privilege of participating in that study. I would just state for the record here that certainly I and everybody who participated in that were very supportive of that report, and it went back to the House.
I don't think there's anything in Mr. Preston's motion. I think he's amenable to amending it if the committee would like to see more in it or less in it, or whatever. It's merely to launch the parliamentary process that was foreseen to dovetail with the independent citizen process that, while being funded by the government, was not to be directed by the government.
That was a concern that many of us had at the completion of our study that we did in the last Parliament. We didn't want to see the politicians, the parliamentarians, directing and thus unduly influencing what the citizens had to say about a potential future electoral system that they might envision. Rather, we would have our input through a parliamentary process—not just us, obviously, but our colleagues in both Houses—and the citizens would have their input through this consultative process.
The two, as Jamie said, would be parallel tracks. They would intersect at periods so that we would be apprised of the progress made, one or the other. Ultimately, in the end, we would then have as comprehensive a process and study completed as possible.
Until Jamie just read those out, I wasn't aware that the timelines were that tight. That might be problematic, but I guess we'll have to see how this is unfolding. I haven't had an update as to how the tendering process has gone. In particular, I would think that May 9 date is going to be very tight. We're almost into March already.