There was a report that came out of this committee, and there's been some reference to it. I'm only mentioning it because it's value is this. We did work over, was it two different Parliaments, Tom? It was at least two, maybe into three. But they were in a minority and the world was very different when they were in a minority. That report in terms of electoral reform does reflect, in my view, the honest work and the honest evaluation of all the members who participated because it was a minority and we were trying to make it work. We spent hours working it through, and I enjoyed it. It was quite stimulating, it was good work.
In terms of that report—and this is why I'm raising it for those who follow these matters—it will be interesting to see how close the government reform package, in terms of all these issues we're dealing with here today, comes to the work done when we had an honest evaluation in a non-partisan way. I think there were only one or two issues where we actually disagreed at the end of the day and it wasn't enough to have the opposition at the time say, “No, we're not with the government.” It was unanimous except for those one or two items.
I put that on the record because I hope people will look at it. That was an honest attempt to provide rules that are fair and reflect the needs Canadians have for fair elections.
Mr. Mayrand, I wanted to ask you if this is correct. It's been posed by others that we've really got two key pieces to this. One is your part of it. For the other one we start getting into the issue of privilege. In that regard, it seems to me, Mr. Chair, at some point we may even want Mr. Mayrand here and we may want the parliamentary law clerk side by side as we work this through in making our deliberations. Whether we're going to be able to do this by the end of our time or not, I'm not sure, but we need to do this properly. We need to stay on it until it's done, but please let's ratchet down the partisanship. That's not helping anyone, and it's certainly not helping the member whose seat is in question.
Thanks, Mr. Chair.