Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the witnesses for being here this morning.
Mr. Ouellet, I found it interesting that you have about the same objections or the same negative thoughts as the Chief Electoral Officer of Canada on the question of administration, particularly with respect to the two days, election day and the day before.
Do you have problems finding staff in Saskatchewan, as we have just about everywhere else in Canada? The question that was asked when the Chief Electoral Officer appeared related to precisely that, staff and remuneration. It is difficult already now, so if there are two days in a row, with two sets of rules, it will be even worse.
I like your idea of having two groups of workers, one for the day before and one for election day. On the other hand, that means that there will be three categories of workers: one group for the advance poll days, we'll call them "ordinary" or "regular", another for the Sunday before election day, and a third for election day. I imagine that this would create a pretty heavy administrative burden for the elections organization, not only in Canada, or in the province, in your case, but also for the organizations and political parties.
You gave us to understand that there are a lot of rural regions in your province. You addressed that aspect delicately, talking about the possibility of having advance polls in different places, not just in the province but in each of the ridings. If, instead of spending over $30 million for Canada as a whole to get two more days, it were to be suggested to you that we keep the present number of days, but increase the number of places where people could vote at advance polls throughout the country, for each riding, what would you think of that?
For example, in a city with a population of 100,000, there are generally two places for advance polling, on average. What would you think if, instead of having two, there were four or five? If people in rural regions could travel five kilometres instead of 10 or 20 kilometres, do you think that this would facilitate voting and increase turnout?
Second, instead of adding days, I would like to hear your comments on the possibility of using those funds to improve communications and improve ways of reaching people who are not on the permanent list.