Thank you very much.
And thank you all for being here today.
Before I begin with my questions, I just want to for the record perhaps set something straight. There was commentary that was provided by Mr. Lamoureux's mirror image, Mr. Simms, who was with us during the presentation by Mr. Neufeld, and that is that Mr. Simms brought the example forward of a woman in a care facility in his home province, in his riding actually, who he stated would not have been able to vote without the voter information card, because he said it was the only possible piece of identification that showed where she lived.
I point out that's absolutely false, because contained in the act is the ability for seniors who live in care facilities to merely get an attestation from the head of the facility, saying, “This woman lives here.” That's all they need. So she would have been able to vote, despite the protestations of Mr. Simms. I want to have that on the record.
For my question I think I'll first start with Mr. Fox. I think most Canadians who were paying any attention know, after the last election, the biggest controversy surrounded the robocall situation and Pierre Poutine, the still-unknown Pierre Poutine, who apparently had a fairly widespread and fairly orchestrated attempt of voter suppression. Now, the fair elections act, Bill C-23, deals with that very situation in that it uses the CRTC as the central repository for all voter contact services to register, and in fact without going into all of the details....
I know, Mr. Fox, your organization did fairly extensive studies on voter contact services, but when I asked former chief electoral officer Kingsley, who testified before this committee on Tuesday, if he believed the provisions contained in the fair elections act would prevent that very situation from occurring in the future, he said an unequivocal yes. I would like your opinion, since your organization did so much work on this very issue, about the government's proposal on regulating voter contact services and the role of the CRTC that is contained in Bill C-23.