Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. Mayrand, and your colleagues. Let me first say congratulations to Elections Canada for the fine reputation it has within the country, but also globally. Congratulations to you for the very rapid way in which you familiarized yourself with the operations of the office and the responsibilities, including your meetings with stakeholders.
I will be focused, but I won't necessarily be short. I had three particular questions that I wanted to put to you. One is with respect to the very hard-won and honoured high reputation of Elections Canada around the world. Your predecessor, Jean-Pierre Kingsley, developed a reputation for Elections Canada as an advisor in situations of emerging democracies, helping create electoral commissions, overseeing the registration of voters, and then monitoring the elections themselves.
With respect to the estimates, I'm wondering, first of all, whether this is a practice that you favour and would like to continue, and if so, and in any event, where the funding for this type of activity shows up in the estimates. Is it from specific CIDA allocations, or is it something within your internal budget?
The second question is with respect to your meeting with the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, which, I was very pleased to see, was one of your first meetings.
In the discussions around the bill concerning voter identification, which went to the Senate and actually is now back in the House—some of our major concerns were the lack of registration of people in first nations communities; their voter ID; and the status cards, which, although they have a picture, don't have an address. I wonder if that's something you have taken up or will take up with the national chief to ensure that, at the band level at least, the cards are improved to include the address if it's on reserve or wherever, or if, at least through the band management, letters confirming the address could be made readily available. That could perhaps also assist in encouraging a greater percentage of registration, simply through that process of familiarity.
The third point was with regard to your mention of electoral reform. With respect to that, have you or your colleagues had the opportunity to review the Law Commission of Canada's report of the spring of 2004, which recommends to the Government of Canada a mixed member proportional electoral system? Anyone I have encountered who has considered that report understands it to be one of the most thorough pieces of research on public consultation in the Commonwealth. Is that something you're preparing for as we go forward, at the provincial level and possibly at the federal level, with electoral reform?