First, I would like to thank you for your presentations.
I particularly liked your study here—it has a wealth of information—and your somewhat harsh comments on parliamentarians. However, we all have our own opinions on mores and customs. I would have liked to be one of your students. You would probably have cited me as an example.
I very much enjoyed your presentations, but, at the same time, we see there is a certain diversity of opinion, except that everyone agrees that adding a general polling day the day before the general election is not a universal solution to the problem of declining voter turnout. Even though there may be increases, they will never be significant enough to stop the decline.
In the last two elections, in Quebec City and Ontario, we saw that the advance polling turnout rate was very high. That led us to believe that there would be a higher general turnout rate than in previous elections. However, in both cases, rates remain the same. In Quebec in 2006, the voter turnout rate was exactly the same as in 2003.
I also believe that each of you in your own way noted the fact that it is perhaps the role of the state, of governments and parliamentarians, that is perceived as being less useful than it was in the past. In a way, I believe that the political class has encouraged that, in particular when the effects of globalization were presented as unavoidable effects, natural effects against which governments could do nothing. So they preached, saying that, if we could do nothing with our governments, we would organize ourselves differently. We then witnessed much greater involvement by organizations in civil society, on environmental and other kinds of issues. So I think we have to work more on that.
You talked about a political culture. What I very much liked in your report—in fact, I didn't like it as a conclusion, but it enlightened me a great deal—is where you say on page 20 of your study, and I quote:
The first result suggests that the huge turnout gap between the youngest and oldest generations is unlikely to be reduced by an extension of advanced voting, since it is the oldest citizens who are most prone to take advantage of such measures.
It's in this context that I very much wonder about the utility of taking $54 million...