Let me just say thank you to Mr. Nater for expressing his point of view, which I respectfully and strongly disagree with, but that's okay. That's what it's all about, being allow to disagree.
From my perspective, I want to speak very briefly to Mr. Therrien's points, which I thought were good and well taken.
From my perspective, I don't think this will unnecessarily broaden the scope of the study. I think it's a way to get more value out of the same process. It's an added layer of reflection in the study from a process point of view while we're thinking through how to structure a national citizens' assembly for tackling the one particularly complex, prickly issue of electoral reform, which we know is difficult. Why not also extract the additional value from that work so that we get a reflection on how to design those processes for other types of systemic issues? That's not to say that we're going to go to the same length of study with all of those other issues, so respectfully to Mr. Nater, I don't think it's about just applying it to every issue. We may even reflect under what conditions an issue is the right type of one to apply a citizens assembly to. We may even think about how we design a national citizens' assembly in a different way and ask ourselves slightly different questions depending on what issue we focus on.
I will also note to Mr. Nater, who I think is the representative for Perth—Wellington, if I'm not mistaken.... I've undertaken four of these processes—not citizens' assemblies—in his riding in my previous work on a poverty reduction strategy with the local health unit that took a collective impact approach. We did work on sustainable food systems in his community as well and wrote a report that included hundreds of stakeholders from across Perth and Huron counties on diversity and inclusion in rural communities.
What I would say is that this work is already going on. How do we get the most value out of connecting our parliament to some of these processes? I don't think it's an attempt to filibuster, duplicate, unnecessarily broaden, waste time or talk out the clock. Any of that is, I'm sorry, nonsense. This is an authentic attempt to get a little bit more value out of the reflections that we're going to undertake within, I think, an important piece of work that is sitting before this committee right now. That's the attempt; that's the intent with which I brought this amendment forward, so I just want to stand up for that and let you know that that's my perspective.
Thank you.