Thank you very much, Chair, and thank you all very much for being here.
I wasn't at the last meeting. I had another commitment, so I just want to express my enthusiasm for this. It's not that it's not a bad idea and stuff. I am really gung-ho.
That last time was just a zoo. That was ridiculous. Democracy and Canadians were not served. We're all guilty. I'm not casting aspersions here. Every political party has its share of the blame for that circus.
I read the blues from the last meeting when I was prepping. I noticed Mr. Reid raised similar issues the last time about statutes and legality. If that continues to be unclear after we've met with the Chief Electoral Officer who has a great amount of expertise, then, Chair, it might be wise for us to spend an hour at least with our parliamentary law clerk to understand exactly where we can go and can't go, and the legal pitfalls of going in one direction in terms of Parliament. I'll just leave that with you, sir.
I have to say that initially I thought a stand-alone commission made a lot of sense. I didn't really give it a lot more thought. Since then it's crept back into my own mind whether or not we really should be looking at setting up a whole new stand-alone entity that really only comes to life once every two to four years, depending on whether it's a minority or majority Parliament, versus keeping it somewhere within the office of the Chief Electoral Officer. The advantage of it being with the Chief Electoral Officer is of course that the partisanship is already removed; it's an agent of Parliament. That person works for Parliament and not the government, and that's crucial.
Maybe within that framework the supports are already there. They can be ramped up as they get closer and ramped down. I'm wide open as to which is the way to go. I wonder if you have any further thoughts on that or you can expand on your preference or your thoughts on whether a stand-alone commission would serve us best or we could save a whole lot of money and be a lot more efficient if we went with an already existing structure and modify that.
Could I have your thoughts, please, from all three of you?