Moving on to committee business, we have a few notices of motions that have been given to this committee. We have three motions on notice, including one that was just put on notice this morning. On the order of those motions right now, one is from Ms. Petitpas Taylor, and two are from Ms. Blaney. Since Ms. Blaney at this point is no longer a member of this committee, those two are going to be considered null and void at this time.
I want to mention, though, that one of her motions talked about a study of election ideas or an election during the pandemic. I did have an opportunity to speak with the Chief Electoral Officer last week in reference to the report that Elections Canada has submitted to the House of Commons, which is entitled “Special Report of the Chief Electoral Officer: Administering an Election during the COVID-19 Pandemic”. This report has been circulated to all members of the committee.
Essentially, it's a 27-page report—at least in the English version—and it makes three different recommendations. In my conversation with the Chief Electoral Officer, he was extremely eager to come before this committee to give us his thoughts on the report and to allow us to ask him any questions that we may have regarding the report or elections in the future. The reason he is so eager is that we're in a minority government situation—and I guess I don't need to really explain that—so they need to prepare, and oftentimes they need to prepare a lot sooner than we would think. They need to start getting the wheels in motion. Allowing him to have some insight into what our thoughts on this committee may be would really help form their perspective as to direction.
He's really ready to come in, and regardless of what study we move forward with or what the committee decides today, it's oftentimes very difficult to get witnesses in on a last-minute notice. I wanted to let you know that he is willing to come in Thursday if we were to move on a study related to that, but right now we do have Madam Petitpas Taylor's motion on the floor.
I see that we have some hands up, so I guess I'll put it out to you as to what direction the committee would like to move in.
We have Mr. Turnbull and then Mr. Blaikie.