Okay.
I think the bottom line here is, this is a provision that is now better than the proposed section 18 that was tabled in the bill, but it still has the major limitations that we've been setting out. It's deeply, deeply disappointing and disturbing, including to go back to my colleague Scott Simms' image of cherry-picking.
What rationale, other than some soft spot for civic education, is there for restoring public education and information programs only to one sector? If you look at groups like aboriginal people in our society, new Canadians, university students, there's an indirect, an implicit kind of backing away from the same education that's valued for students. If it's valued for students, why isn't it valued for those groups? And if it's valued for students because one hopes it's going to lead to their being engaged, active, voting citizens, then is the inverse that...? Whether the hope is there, I'm not going to say, but the effect has to be that we don't care that the other groups are not going to be subject to the same encouragement and therefore may be less inclined to vote. So let's just call that indirect, maybe not intended, but unfortunate and clear in its effects, voter suppression. That's what it is. That's how it ends up.
Tom, that's how it ends up. When you ratchet back what already existed, when you ratchet back all the programs and the ability to run these programs that already exist and you only select one group, and by selecting the one group, you say that this is a valuable thing to do to encourage them to vote, but everybody else is now cut out. You don't worry. I'm saying in the effect that's what it does.
Just so everybody's clear, because it took a little bit of back and forth, the advertising thing now means that the distinction is between the exercise of democratic rights, and then there's the list, a limited list, and any other purpose can still be advertised for as long as it's different from the exercise of democratic rights. That's an unfortunate distinction in terms of potentially narrowing the Chief Electoral Officer's ability to advertise as it makes sense to him, and so that's also a limitation.
That said, when we do come to vote on this, I'll be voting for it, because as an amendment, it's better than proposed section 18 was, but I'm very disappointed.