Really, it's called best practices. Some provinces have gone down this road and have the scars and got the court cases to decide it. I don't think there are that many issues, frankly, to be concerned about.
What is a real issue is the political culture, and that is the real problem in Ottawa. Members of this committee, you are a minority group. There are 300 elected representatives in this city, and countless thousands of others who are running the Government of Canada. I think highly of the public service. They're dedicated. But they're operating within an Ottawa culture of secrecy and control.
It is on record that many senior public servants consider Parliament to be an inconvenience--an inconvenience. Certainly the work that you will be doing and the recommendations you will be making in the coming weeks relating to referendums will get a lot of cold water poured all over them and you.
In 1992 a briefing book was put out, for government members, anyway, on how to go and sell and deal with the referendum question. This was a briefing book on the proposed legislation enabling a federal referendum on constitutional reform, which I subtitled “The government's crafted speech modules for dumbing up the referendum topic”.