Gentlemen, thank you both for being here.
I want to pick up on what my colleague Mr. Reid had been talking about vis-à-vis advertising.
Like Mr. Reid, I totally agree that the advertising dollars being spent by Elections Canada should solely be concentrating on where to vote, how to vote, and what ID you need, and for a couple of reasons. I strongly believe that the current advertising campaign on why one should vote hasn't been effective. Statistics prove that. I also think that if you just give the basic information of where and how to vote and with what ID, that in itself is promoting voter turnout.
Last, I would point out that I think with all of the other tools we have at our fingertips through schools, through parental guidance, through political parties trying to educate people and get them out to vote, if a person doesn't vote because they don't feel the need to vote, all the advertising in the world from Elections Canada is not going to convince them to vote. But most of the people don't vote because they don't know where or know what they should bring by way of ID.
I also would suggest to you, and this is on which I'd like your comments, that if Elections Canada concentrated their advertising dollars on a yearly basis on what documentation one needs to provide to be able to vote.... Now we have not quite 18 months before the next election. If an advertising campaign were started vigorously today, do you think that those people who might want to vote but don't have the proper ID might have enough time to get the proper ID?