Thank you.
I heartily agree with your comment regarding voter participation thresholds. I can see the merits of doing what the Australians do, saying you either vote or you get a $200 fine. I can see the merits of accepting what the Swiss do, which is to say, if we get 30% voter turnout, that in its own way is a healthy thing because it indicates that people are voting on question A, which they understand, but on question B, which was also on the ballot, they're choosing not to vote because they think their lack of information would make them vote unintelligently and they would let others who understand it vote. Those are respected.
What you don't want to have, I think, is what Italy has done, which is to say you have to have x per cent vote in order for it to succeed, and then one of the messages that goes out from those who oppose whatever measure is on the ballot is just to stay home. In so doing, you will more effectively kill it than if you came out and voted against it and raised the threshold above a certain level. So inherently, under the Italian example, you de-legitimize referenda. That's just a comment.
With regard to the idea of epoch-making or defining issues, the one that comes to my mind most clearly is the Anti-terrorism Act in 2001. We were all elected a little less than a year before 9/11, with no mandate to act in any way at all on the fallout from 9/11. It struck me at the time that the Anti-terrorism Act, which of course suspended some fundamental civil liberties, and did so permanently, would have been a perfect item on which to have a referendum. I guess I'm inviting your comment on that.
Finally, I wanted to ask you about the idea of putting multiple questions on the same ballot. You mentioned that the Meech Lake Accord would have been a perfect item to put on the referendum ballot. The Meech Lake Accord, in practice, was going to involve five separate amendments to the Constitution of Canada. The one that required the unanimity threshold was arguably the least contentious of those, regarding the structure of the Supreme Court, ratifying the convention that three Supreme Court justices be from Quebec, whereas the most contentious, the distinct society clause, required only 7/50. Would that, by way of example, have been a good idea, to take that question and put it on as a serious and separate question on those separate amendments? Or would you think that would have been ill-advised?