Obviously the hon. member shares my view in this regard, otherwise he would not have brought forward this motion. He wants to change the charter. He obviously shares my view that this is unconstitutional. He wants to fix it so that it will be constitutional. He wants to take away the right of all persons in prison to vote as I read it.
It says a penitentiary and everyone knows what a penitentiary is. He says everyone in a psychiatric institution should not have a right to vote. A person who checked in because he or she needs treatment for depression would not be allowed to vote. That is the effect of the hon. member's motion. That is why the committee when it considered this matter was so reluctant to move in this area. It was because of the difficulty in choosing who should be voting and who should not. It was an extremely difficult question.
The committee did not think it was something that it ought to make a decision on and ought to fix in the law. It was better to give the franchise on a broad spectrum, allow everybody to vote, than try to determine who is reasonable and who is not. If we went on reasonability I am sure we would have psychiatrists in here checking out some of the members of the House to see if they were suitable for voting.