Thank you all for being here.
Maybe I'll let each of you take a crack at this.
One of the reasons we're studying this is effectively the very low rate of participation of Canadians outside of the country, which is less than 2% of those who are actually eligible to vote. There are other countries that clearly are doing better. France, I think, is about 35 times better than Canada. The United States is eight times better than Canada, and there are others.
There are two separate pieces. One is obstacles to voting and whether there are ways to make it more accessible. The other is the engagement of the community. Let me take first the obstacles. There's a lot of interesting feedback in terms of different options. There's the idea of actually taking a fairly restrictive Canadian system right now in terms of mail and having the kit made available online and making it much more widely available to vote at consulates and embassies. There's the proxy voting—which is really interesting—all the way to electronic voting.
If you were advising us about the best way for us to actually simplify the process to get higher levels of turnout, what would that be?
We could start with Professor James, and then go to Professor Pearce Laanela, Professor Fraysse and finally Professor Garnett.