Thank you very much.
Thank you all for being here, lady and gentlemen.
I'm going to play devil's advocate for a moment, not to say that I'm opposed to the initiatives contained within Mr. Chong's bill, but there are always two sides to every argument and I know you all can appreciate that.
There are two main elements here. I think you primarily touched on both of them. One is whether the party caucuses should have the right under certain circumstances for the removal of their party leader. The second one is whether the parties or the individual riding associations should have final say on who their local candidates would be.
Let me deal with the first one, that of whether the caucus should be allowed or should have the ability to remove a party leader. One could make the argument, as I believe Mr. Milliken did, that since in this day and age most party leaders are elected through a full “one member, one vote” process, it is the party membership that elects a leader. Only they should have the ability to remove a leader as opposed to a smaller group of caucus members who, while duly elected and nominated, were nominated by a far smaller group of people.
How do you answer that? There seems to be a disconnect there if 300,000 to 400,000 people who are members of a particular party voted in favour of electing a particular party leader, but then they should not have a similar say in removing that leader. Do you not think there's a bit of a disconnect there?
I'll start with Professor Turnbull and move right on down the line.