Thank you very much, Scott, for your question and for your request on these two issues.
With regard to the VIC, the voter information card, this is really important for Canadians. In terms of establishing their residency, it's important to note that the VIC can't be used on its own, but can be used with other forms of identification to establish residency. When you think about it, there are not very many forms of identification that actually have your photo, your name, and your address on them. There are numbers of Canadians who don't have driver's licences, for example. For those Canadians, this is really important.
I thought that the acting CEO, Mr. Perrault, had a great point when he talked about the fact that this is actually about dignity for a lot of people. When you think about it, for a lot of married couples, particularly older couples, there might not be mail that comes in the name of both individuals, or there might not be bills or utility bills that could be used to establish residency. When I think about people in my community who really relied on the VIC, I think of elderly women in particular who needed that piece of identification, women who perhaps don't drive or have stopped driving and who don't have mail coming to them in their name that establishes residency with regard to Elections Canada.
In terms of re-enfranchising individuals and ensuring that we're providing dignity to voters and electors, I think it's absolutely critical that we re-establish the voter information card as a piece of identification that can establish residency when we're at a poll.
With regard to the second part of your question and putting the commissioner of Canada elections back within the house of Elections Canada, it's exactly what you're talking about with regard to being within that infrastructure as opposed to at the department of public prosecutions.
Furthermore, with regard to the commissioner, we've re-empowered the commissioner to lay charges and have also added a new tool, which is the ability to compel testimony in order to be able to enforce elections legislation. This was a case that was made very strongly by the commissioner. It's all well and good if we have in place a set of laws that are strict, that limit undue influence, and that really ensure people are abiding by the books, but if we don't have the tools and the ability to actually prosecute and ensure that those rules are being followed, then it's not strong enough. Personally, and on behalf of the government, I think this is very important to ensure that those laws are being upheld.