Thank you, Mr. Chair.
What I would say to Mr. O'Toole's question is that if he and the government side were willing to engage in a discussion on redefining what “address” means in the act, so that the letter of attestation...for people who are only receiving services and can't, in a reasonable sense, be said to reside there—then sure, why not? Let's do that.
At the same time, as Mr. Allen said, why not keep vouching as the final safety net and not get rid of the voter information cards? They do come from an intersection of databases that have not been shown to be liable to produce fraud.
Professor Oudshoorn, I'd like to just compliment you and your colleagues in London for what you do. The description of citizens helping citizens and the way you do it is absolutely inspiring, and I guess all I would do is echo Madame Alexandrine Latendresse's comments that the idea of adding extra burdens by getting rid of vouching, without anything that would be a sure replacement, does not make sense.
Mr. Allen, you used another amazing metaphor. You said there are already lots of hoops to jump through and that taking the hoop away is just too much to accept. I thought that was an amazingly accurate and poignant image, so thank you for that.
I did want to ask you just a little bit more, because Mr. Reid started on this, and he asked some very good questions on the bank account opening. I just want to point out an irony here. At some level, vouching to open a bank account—and you said that in 10,000 or so cases there has been no instance of fraud as a result that you know of. In the end, you're a bank, and presumably if paper forms of the bank statement were available, those could turn into proof of address within the current system, if you had a second piece of ID, which people may not. So why not allow vouching in the first place if that which produces a valid address in the system is vouching?