I have a few questions I'd like to ask you, Mr. Seidle, because in your closing comments you kind of hit a couple of chords with me.
One of them was the fact that you've been studying election laws, I believe you said, for over 30 years from a public policy point of view. Your comment was something to the effect that in those 30 years, never have you seen an election law of this nature being passed, or being forced through the House.
It seemed to me the reason you were making this statement was that only one entity is actually pushing this legislation through. To the best of my knowledge, there is no other political party outside of the Conservative Party that supports this legislation. We have the current and past chief electoral officers raising serious concerns and problems with the legislation and the need for it to have amendments. We've had academics both here in Canada and outside of Canada point to how bizarre this whole process is and the impact many of the changes will have.
I'm wondering if you might want to emphasize that aspect in terms of how important it is, when you change an election law, to build on some sort of consensus. That has always been my experience. I've been a parliamentarian for 20 years, at a different level, but locally in Manitoba it seemed there always was some sense of consensus when you changed an election law.
Could you provide more comment on that particular issue?