Mr. Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to join in the debate on Bill C-20 because, members might be interested to know, perhaps even before I got into politics, I was seized with the issue of constitutional reform, as it relates to democratic reform, in my days working as a carpenter. I answered an advertisement in The Globe and Mail back in 1991, I believe, looking for interested Canadians who may want to participate in what was at that time a very bold and unique venture, which was a cross-country consultation with Canadians, to have a discussion, a debate, about opening the Constitution to address a number of the irritants, as it were, that threatened the integrity of our Confederation.
As fate would have it, my name was chosen to be one of what they called “ordinary Canadians” who would form a citizen assembly.