Everyone testified on this bill. They highly support this. The former Chief Electoral Officer, Marc Mayrand, whom many of us know and who is held in high regard in terms of his running of elections, has said this:
Weekend voting would also increase the availability of qualified personnel to operate polling stations and of accessible buildings, such as schools and municipal offices, for use as polling places.
It's not just on the voter side of things. By all the evidence—and we're supposed to be an evidence-based committee, an evidence-based government, as I think they keep saying—the evidence for voters is helpful, but it's also helpful for Elections Canada in their staffing.
When did we start doing early voting as a major effort? I want to say it was 2006 when it started to really ramp up, 2004 or 2006. More and more early voting dates have become available, and voters like it. They like to be able to vote at their convenience rather than in long lineups. Some still like the tradition of voting day as the official day.
This amendment would simply get rid of an old aberration when maybe political times were different and the idea of having people work on a Sunday to staff the voting stations and having people participate in politics was seen as a negative.
That is clearly not the reality in Canada anymore. We're a diverse country. I think if we want more people voting and we want to help Elections Canada run elections, this amendment and the consequential ones would be good to vote for.