Mr. Speaker, the short answer is that I have a very different understanding from the minister of the relationship between causation and correlation.
The minister has spent a lot of time on this, and he is now paring back. Criticism has shown him the error of his way, not on this point, but on the Neufeld report. He was constantly citing irregularities early on, as if they amounted to fraud, or even the serious risk of fraud. Gradually he has begun to nuance because he knows that people have read the report and understand that is not what Neufeld said.
There is the same thing on this score. Causation is not correlation. I asked the minister in our earlier debates why we cannot have the new section 18, as written in Bill C-23, alongside the old section 18. The two sections are not in conflict. The new section is a kind of marching order to Elections Canada to engage in the kind of targeted information-giving that the minister has made the case for being beneficial. However, he has made no case that public education and democratic outreach themselves are not beneficial. That is the difference between causation and correlation.