Mr. Speaker, my question is for the Deputy Prime Minister.
This summer in my riding, the government appointed Noël Girard, the defeated Liberal candidate in the 1993 general election, to the position of returning officer.
Does the Deputy Prime Minister not think that the time has come to modernize the rules for selecting returning officers and to put in place, as Quebec did, a system in which returning officers are chosen by competition based on their qualifications rather than their political affiliation?