Mr. Speaker, I would like to go to the source itself. We had four witnesses give direct testimony to this and they were given two minutes to speak. This is actually what their instructions were. The chair said:
...I'm going to give each witness no more than two minutes to introduce yourselves, and, if you choose, to provide us with an opening statement. That will allow members more time to ask questions that are very specific....
Of course, the punchline was that the Bloc, the Liberals and the Conservatives were all lined up not to ask any questions. Therefore, our chair told our witnesses to introduce themselves and then to sit and wait for questions.
Mr. Ian Boyko, government relations coordinator with the Canadian Federation of Students, said:
I'm going to abandon my remarks today, because two minutes isn't enough to even touch on some of the things we have concerns with.
What I will flag for the committee is that my members are having great difficulty understanding the rush that was involved with Bill C-31 in the spring and now the rush that's involved with Bill C-18 today when there are so many flaws in the Elections Act that prevent students and those with transient addresses from registering to vote.
He went on to say that the bill “will ensure that tens of thousands of students won't be able to meet the Elections Act requirements in the upcoming federal election”.
He continued by saying:
Like I said, we have serious concerns about the way students are being alienated from this process, and why the rush on rural voters and not the rush on other very important voting populations that were ignored in Bill C-31 and that are also ignored in Bill C-18.
Not one member of the other parties asked Mr. Boyko a question. They were not interested in that testimony.
I could go on and on from this dismal day in committee that shows members were not doing due diligence. Our fundamental job is to ensure that due diligence is always done.