You know why I'm asking that, right?
This is one of the fundamental problems we had. In the Figueroa case before the Supreme Court, Mr. Figueroa was challenging a law which said that you had to have contested a certain number of seats in the last election in order to qualify for certain rights in this election, which of course was designed to freeze out new parties that had widespread support. It was introduced by the Chrétien government after the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois came out of nowhere. It was clearly meant to ensure that couldn't happen again.
The court ruled, I think rightly, that trying to quash populist movements like the Reform Party and the Bloc Québécois is unconstitutional, a violation of section 3. Do you see what I'm getting at? Isn't the 5% number based on the previous election also essentially saying that preferences that haven't been expressed for four years are somehow less worthy than preferences that are four years old or more?