Mr. Speaker, I did not put that right. Let me put it in Conservative speak. “We do not want to hear” means it is a circus show, a gong show. In other words, “Give us what we want to hear; otherwise it becomes an exercise that is not helpful to democracy”, which does the complete opposite. It actually hurts democracy; let us be honest.
As far as a resolution is concerned, the intent of it is right, but I am kind of worried about the date of May 1. I think maybe they might want to change that to make sure it goes beyond May 1. I understand the intent of it, but I think going beyond May 1 would allow more people to speak. It states in the bill the regions that members want to go to, and it pretty much covers everybody in geography and everybody in society. I will read from it. It talks about the regions: Atlantic Canada, which my esteemed colleague from Avalon and I are proudly from, Quebec, Ontario, northern Ontario, the Prairies, British Columbia, and of course, the north. That pretty much covers everything.
In rural and urban areas, absolutely, we would get to the nub of the issue about rural vote vouching, which really helps people there. It talks about first nations as well, which is very important on the vouching issue; anti-poverty groups; groups representing persons with disabilities, which has come up quite a bit. The minister goes to great lengths to point out what the government is doing for people with disabilities, and I do not doubt his intention and good-willed nature, but what is going to happen is that the government's intent to do something good would be subjected to a policy that would fail in its execution. That is with regard to vouching, of course.
The right to vote freely and fairly is fundamental to the integrity of Canada's electoral system. We all believe in that, we all want to vote for that, and we push for that, but remember that we are a model for the international community. If we are model for the international community—nations all over the world at any stage of democracy, especially the young democracies—why do we not want to hear from the public about how we can make this legislation better and not worse? I do not know if anybody in the House has noticed—some people have, but not everybody—according to the emails and unsolicited input I get, a lot of people have problems with this bill in a very fundamental and substantial way that will move us away from being the international model that we worked so hard to build.