Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my hon. friend on a very well-reasoned speech.
I listened to the debate this morning, and some numbers were thrown around. One of them concerns the important issue of vouching. The estimate is that in the last election about 120,000 Canadians took advantage of the vouching provision. I have heard the hon. minister say that there have been 45,000 cases of administrative irregularity, but the flip side is that there were 75,000 cases in which the vouching system was used absolutely properly. Canadians gave proper ID, the paperwork was done properly, and they vouched for a single Canadian. I find it instructive that not a single one of those 75,000 cases has resulted in an incident of voter fraud. While we have 75,000 cases of proper procedure being followed, there is not a single example across the country of someone voting when we did not have the information to verify.
In the time when Canadian federal elections are seeing turnouts of about 60%, could the member explain what merit he might see in putting any restrictions on the ability of Elections Canada to restrict voting programs, whether to students or to any other group that may have difficulty voting?
I would conclude by pointing out that when all of the opposition parties are opposed to a bill, all of the major media in the country are opposed to a bill, international experts are opposed to a bill, and the Chief Electoral Officer is opposed to a bill, does my hon. colleague think it might be instructive to the government that maybe it has struck the wrong chord with this piece of legislation?