In any event, it's important to reframe the prorogation debate. It's important to make decisions and to work together. That's the message I want to send today.
Why make the Prime Minister come here, and pour fuel on the fire.
Continuing to call for the presence of the Prime Minister, which is something that happens only in exceptional circumstances, when we already have everything we need to make decisions and produce a report, strikes me as pointless.
According to Dr. David Williams, Ontario is in agreement with our committee. He is a witness, and I will therefore quote his sentence:
...the administration of an election should be executed without creating further barriers to voting, especially in consideration of providing every individual who is legally able to vote with the opportunity to vote, regardless of accessibility needs.
There is an important point in what he said afterwards:
That means using assistive voting technology and other types of assistance at the voting location...
It's important for us to keep up with what's happening, and we need to discuss it in this committee. We could bring a motion simply on the basis of Dr David Williams' December 10 evidence. He believes that technology could play an extremely important role.
Think about the challenges to be met and the problems to be dealt with in a riding like mine, where barely 40% of the population has access to high-speed Internet, and where people have to drive for an hour to get to the nearest polling station. We need only think of elderly people or those with decreasing independence who need transportation assistance when there is none in rural areas. They need a friend or family member to help out. There are also those who live alone. We need to debate the procedure and some factors that are extremely important for the future of this committee, not to mention the fact that we have a long list of other subjects to discuss.
For all these reasons, I sincerely believe that we should reject this motion and concentrate on writing the report.