I'll be pleased to. I'll draw a distinction, though, between the support or otherwise of the Chief Electoral Officer and of other political parties.
On the latter, for decades it was the tradition and I would say probably an unwritten rule that changes to the Elections Act, even very major ones, were the subject of all-party consensus.
When the Election Expenses Act which came into effect in 1974 was passed, it occurred under a minority Parliament. The NDP held the balance of power. David Lewis was the leader at the time. All of this was the subject of my doctoral research. There were a number of very significant changes, including the threshold for access to candidate reimbursement, which were conditions of support that David Lewis and the NDP placed in front of the government.
If we flash forward, this began to break down, actually, under a Liberal administration, because in the face of the reforms that came into effect in 2004, the two parties that became the Alliance, as it then was, were opposed to the annual public funding allowances granted to political parties. I don't know how the vote proceeded at the time, but certainly in their public statements they were opposed.
The present government abolished these allowances, against the wishes of the other two political parties in the House of Commons. So in the last decade the all-party consensus tradition has been weakened.
Turning to the Chief Electoral Officer, it has been traditional that many of the amendments came from the reports of the Chief Electoral Officer, particularly on more technical issues: flaws or difficulties were noticed, he reported, and these were picked up as legislation was drafted, and so on. Usually the Chief Electoral Officer was consulted informally.
I realize there's a debate this time about the degree to which he was consulted on this. Apparently there was a meeting with Mr. Poilievre that lasted a half hour, and Mr. Poilievre got rather bored with what Mr. Mayrand was saying because he felt it was all in the public record.
Whether this is true, I don't know, but there certainly is a lot on the record, based on Mr. Mayrand's testimony, that demonstrates there's quite a bit of light between him and the sponsoring minister on a number of very important matters in the bill, whether in the enforcement area or concerning the commissioner or on the issue of vouching, and so on. There's a long list there.
I know of no other example, even dealing with less important amendments, in which there was that much difference between the Chief Electoral Officer and the sponsoring minister.