That's what I was going to ask.
It would be very helpful to have that just so that we can piece together and look over the suggestions you've made. If you're doing that, then that would be wonderful. I would appreciate that.
Let me turn to the other thing I wanted to talk about, because it's come up here. That's the Chief Electoral Officer's advertising. I lobbied the minister pretty hard to include some instructions to the Chief Electoral Officer about some things he had to advertise. The list I had in mind more or less reflects the list that is now in the reworded subsection 18(1) of the act.
I think it's essential that these things are advertised. This is not advertising about what you “ought” to do, that you “ought” to get out and vote. He's put a lot of emphasis in the past...and I'm sure you can find his ads online showing people who stand up to speak and nothing comes out of their mouth because they haven't voted.
These are all about why you should vote. I have no idea how effective they are, because I've never seen any post facto research on them. But there is nothing about the basics of how to become a candidate. He should be telling people, advertising, how to become a candidate; how an elector may have their name added to the list of electors, or may have corrections put in if their name is put in incorrectly. Both are things that happen a lot. People aren't on the list, or there is some sort of error as to their information on the list. He should be telling people how an elector may vote, and all the different ways of doing it—advance polls, mail-in ballots, and so on—which is really not advertised very much. It is on the voter information card, but you have to get the information card in order to vote. You should also know how to establish your identity in order to vote; the kinds of pieces of identification that will be necessary in order to cast your ballot; measures that are available for assisting you if you have a disability to cast your ballot, if you have a visual impairment or a mobility impairment, etc. Then there is a provision in there saying that he has to provide all that information in a way where that information is accessible to people who have disabilities.
All of that was put in there largely at my request. I think it's necessary. This isn't in the bill, but I think he should have to report on what he did, how successful it was or wasn't, and what he will do to improve it in the future, because these are fundamental to voting.
I'm giving a long diatribe here rather than asking you a question. There will be a question, but I just want to point out that in his report tabled just recently, the 2011 general election national youth survey report, he points out that youth have the lowest participation rate of any group in Canadian society. In terms of the reasons they didn't vote, when he looked at them, he came to the conclusion that not receiving a voter information card—largely, I think, because of mobility, as they move around a lot—was a key component in why they wouldn't vote. There was a low level of awareness of the different ways to vote; that's for unemployed youth not in school. He cites that as being one of the key reasons. There's also not knowing when to vote; that's for ethnocultural youth.
It seems to me that this kind of basic informational, unsexy advertising, which he has really neglected in the past, is one of the absolute keys to boosting voter participation. That is one of the things this legislation tries to do. I don't know, isn't that a good thing?
Having said that, I was directing this to Professor Marland before, but I have no particular concern about who answers this first.
Professor Pammett.