Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Brian, it's good to see you. Thank you for coming today.
Just for the record, for the history books of Canada, we do want to acknowledge that notwithstanding the sophistication and cosmopolitanism that Mr. Topp brings, he doesn't normally like to wear a tie. Out of respect for Parliament and Canadians, he wore a tie, and I want Hansard to reflect the fact that he felt that strongly about this. We can't get him to do it at any other meeting I've been to, I'll tell you.
Reference has been made to your book, and that's one of the reasons we brought you here: you have first-hand experience with a number of these issues. It's particularly interesting to hear the government members beginning to plant the seeds and suggesting that unless a hypothetical coalition is declared early on, there's no legitimacy in it.
They managed to kill the issue and they won. I give them their due. They did it by publicly demonizing the whole notion of coalitions. I think we're slowly getting past that, but I want to ask your thoughts on this idea that it has to be declared ahead of time. I'll ask you to link it to the fact that on at least two occasions--and I stand to be corrected if I'm wrong--the current government, in a minority situation, passed their budgets and stayed in power with the support of the Bloc, because budgets are votes of confidence. Of course, it was the ingredient of the Bloc's support for the proposed coalition of the NDP and the Liberals that the government used to focus their major demonization, if you will.
It's interesting to see them trying to put this forward as, “If you're not declaring ahead of time, it's not going to have any legitimacy”. I'd like some of your thoughts on that. We don't have a lot of time. I'll link it with another question.
I was interested in your reference to Germany, Spain, and Hungary in terms of some of the language they had that you thought was very effective. I see you have a paper beside you with some of that. I'll give you an opportunity to read some of that to us, because I'd like to hear the clarity that you're quite supportive of.