Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I will take a brief moment to make a comment so that we're actually all clear on what this bill would do. Apart from the fact that it's no longer prescriptive, it's creating model rules.
Concerning the relationship between the parties and the party leaders, this bill would allow for the caucus to remove a leader and elect an interim leader. They are not electing an interim leader of the extra-parliamentary party. The leader remains the leader of the extra-parliamentary party if the leader has been elected by the extra-parliamentary party; that's absolutely right. That's what Michael Chong testified to, and that's how it works. There are two different parties in the political system.
What it does is produce a tension as a result of the fact that if caucus is going to do that to their sitting leader in the parliamentary party, they have to contend with the fact that they have the popularly elected leader still formally the leader. Michael Chong's bill leaves open to each party how they're going to deal with that tension.
The fact is that this is the way it already works. Whenever somebody is forced out or resigns or whatever, they don't always resign as leader of the extra-parliamentary party. I just want to make sure that's clear. However messy it is, that's the way it works.
The second thing is that Nik Nanos just did a poll showing that not all rules are viewed by Canadians with the same favour. The rule of removing the leader by the parliamentary caucus was disfavoured by about 65% to 70%. This reflects Tom's observation that we have layered a populist, presidentializing party process on top of the old parliamentary approach to choosing a leader.
I just wanted to bring that up and then leave it to my colleague to ask her questions.