Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for showing me such mercy, given the state of my health today.
On the first question of the timelines, I did think about this quite a lot, because the member is right that ballots would have to travel to the voter and then be returned. One thing I would correct is to say that the application would not have to travel by mail. It could be done online. Therefore, the Canadian citizen voting, say from Abu Dhabi or Beijing, or some other location that is hard to reach, could actually provide a scanned document and email the identification and have the ballot mailed very quickly.
Canadian residents who happen to be around the world use that process right now. They do so with success. In my time I have never encountered a snowbird, for example, who said they wanted to vote but that there just was not enough time for the mail to go back and forth and so they did not get their vote counted. Therefore, I think if it works for Canadian residents who are visiting abroad, it should work for Canadian non-residents abroad. It basically would create one system for all electors who happen to be outside of Canadian borders, whether they are resident here or not.