Mr. Speaker, I thought we would never straighten this out, but I will continue. You are right to remind the House that
I support the motion. It may not look like it, but it does mean something when someone supports a motion in this House. When I rose earlier in the House it was as seconder of the motion.
What I mean is that we would like and we would have liked, as the hon. member for Bellechasse put it, to have plenty of time to consider the issue. It would have been terribly courteous, good practice and extremely respectful to invite opposition parties, both the Bloc Quebecois and the Reform Party, to take part in the drafting of this bill.
As the hon. member for Bellechasse reminded the House, that was done when the issue of redistribution of seats was addressed. Let us not forget that some people fought hard and lost their lives for the right to be heard in Parliament.
It is important to come to an agreement on the issues of democracy and representation. In our system we have a tool called the list of electors. Why do we have such a tool? Because we brag about having the cleanest, most transparent election practices of the whole world, which promote a strong democracy through representation. The voters' list is an extremely important tool.
We are convinced that the more complete it is, the more information it contains, the easier it will be to track down abusers. This is why we want to see on this voters' list the same thing we have in Quebec, which is identity information, like the age and sex of voters. This would be useful come election time, enabling support staff, the clerk, and representatives to ensure that persons-
I believe my time is up. I think I will be able to continue after question period.