Mr. Speaker, of course, I am not able to provide the member with statistics on the 308 returning officers. However, I challenge her to tell me how many former or current candidates or members of the Bloc Québécois have been appointed to the position at the federal level until now. I am pleased to hear a colleague say that it is probably a matter of competence. In fact, the issue here is whether or not one owns a membership card of the Liberal Party.
Mr. Kingsley said that he would probably appoint all returning officers once again. So be it. However, I would be curious to see how he would react if he had the authority to appoint them and some cases were explained to him. Mr. Kingsley would be asked if it is normal that, in the riding of Honoré-Mercier, votes were cast in a seniors' home, where there was a scabies epidemic. Does a competent person act like that?
Let us not forget that the goal remains the free expression of the citizens' democratic choice. The returning officer is nothing more than the fiduciary of the citizens' democratic exercise. When I think that there was not enough ballots! In the riding of Verchères—Les Patriotes, people had to take the ferryboat to go voting. Does this help the election? I could give the example of 2000 in Saint-Laurent, on the Île-d'Orléans. I am the one who brought the returning officer and his assistant, Ms. Davidson, to the polling station. The vote was held in a hockey players' locker room, where they were six polling booths. One was able to see for whom the person in the next polling booth was voting. Is this free exercise? That is totally unacceptable. We need to clean up the process.