Mr. Speaker, very briefly, the Minister of Agriculture is quite correct. The province of British Columbia as well as the province of Ontario have enacted fixed date election practices in their provinces.
When we were examining this bill, we called, as a witness, the deputy chief electoral officer from British Columbia to give her experiences and whether she felt that this was a practice the province of British Columbia would continue.
I am here to testify that she absolutely had nothing bad to say about fixed election dates and how they reacted or how they performed in British Columbia. She felt that most citizens approved of it. In her opinion, election turnout went up because of it. All the election processes with which her department had to comply, in other words finding office space, finding DROs and all the other election officials, were so much easier to do under a fixed election date process.
There was absolutely nothing bad in the opinion of the deputy chief electoral officer of British Columbia. I think we will find the same reaction across Canada when we finally enact this legislation.