Mr. Speaker, we have approached the subject of the system of vouching time and time again. From my own point of view, the minister is excessive in trying to correct what he perceives as massive fraud going on, when in fact this is a system that franchises people to vote. By throwing it out completely, he has overblown the issue.
For example, what he just said was that there were 45,000 irregularities. That means that when they were vouched they were not reported. By saying that, he is insinuating that all 45,000 incidents were examples of fraud. They are not. There is that possibility in some of them, but that does not mean all of them have to be tarred with the same brush. This is what the members are doing. They are extrapolating from something that is an inefficiency in the vouching system and using it as a means to eliminate vouching altogether.
At some point during his consultations, did the minister reconsider or fight the internal people he spoke to about not eliminating vouching but making it more efficient or fixing the system, not simply throwing it out?