I'd like to move, as found in the reference document that you have, to make effectively two insertions. They would be subclauses (2.1) and (2.2) in clause 16.1.
They are responsive to both the specific suggestions made by the Chief Electoral Officer on some of the comparative practice around this kind of thing, guidelines or interpretations in other areas that give a degree of discretion to the officer asked to issue the guideline or interpretation
Collectively, this amendment would insert two provisions. First, it would say that the Chief Electoral Officer may decline to issue a guideline or interpretation note when the matter is being considered by the commissioner or by the courts—that's one reason—or when in the opinion of the Chief Electoral Officer, the matter is inappropriate. Second, before issuing a guideline or interpretation note, the Chief Electoral Officer may take into consideration any information that he or she believes is necessary to prepare it.
Again, these are responsive to comparative practice and what the Chief Electoral Officer brought to us. He also indicated that there is a need for some kind of a mechanism throughout these new sections 16.1 to 16.4 to collectively prevent a huge logjam, a huge amount of extra work for Elections Canada on the simple basis that guidelines and interpretations can be asked for.
One of the mechanisms for dealing with this is that if the matter is inappropriate, the Chief Electoral Officer does not have to go through the motions of issuing a guideline or interpretation.
There will be other ones I'm going to be tabling which go more closely to the issue of efficiency, but we'll leave it at that.