So that answers the question about the cost of having these extra days.
Mr. Chair, far be it from me to jump in here and defend your decision to have this legislation and the minister before us, but I clearly recall at the last meeting, which was only yesterday—I don't have a long memory, but we had that special meeting yesterday to deal with Bill C-54. At the end of it, I recall you saying something to the effect that tomorrow we would have our regular Tuesday meeting at 11 a.m., and the minister would be appearing to discuss this piece of legislation. You asked if anybody had any concerns, and nobody did. So for Mr. Proulx's benefit, that's how I remember the conversation yesterday. There was notification of the events of today.
Rather than suggesting that the government or the minister is trying to suck and blow at the same time, I look at it a bit more positively—instead of always looking at it in a negative way when it comes to government legislation. I'd like to maybe use a different adage, something like we're offering Canadians the best of both worlds with this legislation.
As Mr. Proulx quite correctly stated, some people might consider it an affront to their religious convictions to vote on a Sunday. But they don't have to. They can still vote on the regular election day on Monday, in one of the other advance polls, or by attending Monday to Saturday at the returning office. So they have a lot of options as well. We're not trying to do anything negative here. I think this offers more choice.
I always believe that politics is the art of the possible, so we have to sometimes do what's doable. I guess I'm referring now to Mr. Dewar's comments about lacking vision. For the 14 years I've had the privilege of being in Parliament I've heard criticism about making any reforms to our democratic institutions because it would be piecemeal. We used to hear that all the time from former Prime Minister Paul Martin. Any time we wanted to see any changes made to either the House of Commons or the Senate of Canada, he would say he didn't want to do it piecemeal. That was an excuse for doing nothing.
Now that we're trying to make some incremental changes we're being accused of not having a vision, or cobbling this together and maybe getting ourselves into a mess that way. If we're ever going to change things around here we have to start somewhere. That's why I refer to my earlier comment about politics being the art of the possible. We want to make some changes, and I think Canadians are expecting us to make some changes. That doesn't preclude us from making more dramatic changes as we go along, and I think that was Mr. Dewar's point. I don't think this is the be-all and end-all. Nobody is saying it is, but it is a step.
I'd like to give whatever time I have left to the minister to respond, instead of using the whole five minutes for myself.