Mr. Lukiwski, some time ago I had the honour of joining the Governor General when he went to China and Mongolia. In both of those countries, there are many reasons they love our country. One of the reasons is Elections Canada. It isn't so much the size of Elections Canada, or how they are able to conduct elections in a country this size; it simply is the independence. Every young democracy, and this country, praises us for its independence.
In the testimony we received here, time and time again witnesses praised the civics program, which you're doing as well, but each witness never said that the prescription to this bill was not to save this program; the prescription was to save the independence of the office, to allow it to invest in a program like civics. It gives them that freedom to do that.
What you have done here in your amendment is not something to give them freedom. You've cherry-picked something that you think you like, which is a good program. But by saying, “We'll give you independence,” in other words, choose a card from this deck of cards, the problem is that the deck only has one card. You're being way too prescriptive in the independence that you want to give.
Despite the fact that you keep focusing on the method of which voting...which is noble, which is what they want to do, but let these people decide how it is they will make democracy more effective.
In this particular amendment, at the end you say the following:
(1.1) For greater certainty, subsection (1) does not prevent the Chief Electoral Officer from transmitting or causing to be transmitted advertising messages for any other purpose relating to his or her mandate.
Well, the mandate was set by you, not by them. That's where the problem lies in all of this.
I don't accept this for several reasons. I think what you have done is you have curbed the independence and are pretending, and you're doing this by cherry-picking particular positives in this group.