Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech of my friend, both in and out of the House. It has to be said, and I think this was agreed by all committee members, that he did an admirable job as the chair of the Special Committee on Electoral Reform. He handled a very difficult job. We went all over the place, and he was always non-partisan and very fair to the witnesses.
The member mentioned two things about integrity, sort of impugning some sort of political motive in asking Canadians for their direct opinions on something.
I was with a pollster last night and had coffee with a political scientist who works in this field. They asked me what we were doing today. I told them we were trying to add some direct questions. There are some direct questions in the government's survey, such as, “Would you like to lower the voting age?” That is a direct, simple, straightforward question. However, any question that deals with arriving at a system of some kind is not direct. They always have these additions, such as “even if chaos were to follow”, or “even if democracy were to fall apart”, these extreme and false choices. They said that this was a problem with the government's survey. The Liberals have produced a survey that cannot get them good results. Bad questions equal bad data, was what a colleague said, who is highly esteemed in the world of the social sciences.
Was it not political of the government, of the minister to choose to not ask the obvious question?
Canadians want to be consulted, and they are glad to be consulted. They will come into the conversation in good faith. However, if in the midst of that conversation they realize this is a cynical exercise that never asks the question they hope to answer and then spits out results calling them a “navigator”, “protector”, or some value that they do not agree with, then they are more than offended by it.
Therefore, let us not make this political. Let us make it accurate. Let us make it something that all parties agree on, and get an honest and clear answer from Canadians over a question that belongs to them and not to any political party in this place.