Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Saint-Laurent—Cartierville for his speech. I know that he closely followed the progress of the bill in the House and in committee. He delivered a very interesting speech that underscores some things that, I agree, are extremely problematic in this bill.
I share his opinion on the final point that he made: something major is missing from this bill and that is the power of the Commissioner of Canada Elections to compel witnesses to testify. I would like to read what the commissioner himself said when he came to committee.
...I want to be absolutely clear: if this amendment is not made, investigations will continue to take time, and in some cases a lot of time. Importantly some investigations will simply be aborted due to our inability to get at the facts.
The commissioner himself came and told us that in committee. If the person who is called to investigate electoral fraud in Canada tells us something as loud and clear as that, then I would like the hon. member to explain to me why, in his view, this amendment was not included among those proposed by the government.
Why would the government deny this right, which seems extremely important for getting to the bottom of real electoral fraud in our country?