Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
We certainly do have problems when we count $34 million and try to divide it by how many people. It somewhat becomes a bit of a red herring. I guess, again, the question we have to ask is the best way to use money to ensure that we're getting voters out.
We just had the Ontario election, and it was very instructive for issues of advance polling and problems with voting that we saw. We tried to get advance polling on the James Bay coast for the Cree. Well, that wasn't considered a priority by Elections Ontario, and on election day we heard the chief of one of the communities saying, “Nobody in our community will be voting, because this is when we're out hunting.” So we lost an entire section of our region that was unable to vote because Elections Ontario didn't think it was of significant importance to make advance opportunities for those isolated regions.
So on the question of how best to spend this money, I have to keep getting back to the issue we have, two scenarios: we have advance polling; and we have full-day Sunday, the two-day scenario.
The other day, my colleague from the Conservative Party had said that it would be a great opportunity, because people would go to church and then they could go downstairs and vote. I guess my sense from the demographics—and I'd like to get a sense from you—is that the people who get up on Sunday morning and go to church regularly are pretty much within the frame of people we can count on to vote. If they're going to get up at eight o'clock and go to church every Sunday, they're most likely to participate in their civic duty. So is the extra Sunday the best use of money to ensure that they have ease of voting when we've provided all these other opportunities?