Yes, I wanted to thank Mr. Blaikie for moving this motion. I remember when he tabled it, it definitely piqued my interest on a number of different levels. I'm not looking at this through exactly the same lens as Mr. Blaikie, but I appreciate his commitment to electoral reform and the really in-depth thoughts and suggestions he has around that.
I wasn't in the last Parliament to witness all of the work that was done on that, and I know that it didn't maybe move forward in the way that we had all hoped, but I do want to say that I'm very supportive of this study, this motion. The thing I want to point to, which for me is really important, is just the use of the tool of a citizens' assembly or a citizens' jury, as it is sometimes called. Coming from a background steeped in social innovation, I see how these participatory action research mechanisms or processes can really lead to a much healthier democracy and have citizens really truly engaged in a way that perhaps they don't get to engage with government.
I want to just express my support for the tool. I think what's intriguing about this study and the way that Mr. Blaikie has crafted it is that it does enable us to actually think through how we might use a citizens' assembly, because of the way it's structured, with the terms of reference, the composition of such an assembly and a timeline for completion of such an assembly.
I'm thinking about how this could also be a tool and a study, if we were to undertake it, if it is indeed the will of the committee to undertake this, where we could apply some of the learnings from this to topics other than electoral reform. Where I'm looking at this is not to take out that aspect of it, but I wondered if Mr. Blaikie would be at all supportive or consider it friendly to slightly broaden the language so that we can get the most out of it.
That's one of my thoughts, to have it also at least be open to looking at the use of citizens' assemblies on other persistent social issues. There are ones that come to mind for me that are particularly important, and I know citizens' assemblies have been used within Ontario, for example, on local health integration networks in the past. It was a tool that was in use for various purposes. I think it's a really exciting opportunity to look through that lens and consider how we can do things a bit differently and get citizens truly engaged in the process and innovate new policy solutions, etc.
I'm excited by that prospect. I'm really supportive of the motion overall. I would just ask if Mr. Blaikie wouldn't mind giving me his thoughts on whether he would be willing and open to perhaps a friendly amendment that might just slightly broaden it so that we could get even more out of it.
The only other thought that I have related to this is that, obviously, we're coming to the end of our session so our timeline is short. How do we really get started on something like this? I can't foresee our doing this throughout the summer. That's not my sense, so how do we get the most use out of what we have left of our time before next Wednesday? I wonder about your thoughts on that.