Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his question and for his allusion to Maurice Duplessis, whose offices were just beside the current location of my own.
To respond to his question more seriously, one cannot be from Quebec and be allergic to referendums, for our history is dotted with them.
However, to speak of a referendum at this time would be to put the cart before the horse. There are different ways of consulting the population.
Obviously, I hope that the House has authority over the matter, since we are the representatives of that population. However, there are also ways to set up a citizens’ committee that would be charged with doing parallel work on this reform and could also consult experts and its respective populations.
There are various ways, and if one day we should take the referendum route, which is not allowed by the Constitution at present, I must point out, we will also be able to consider what the subject of the referendum should be.
Should the referendum be on a proposal? If we actually attained this much-coveted broad consensus, could we not introduce this electoral reform and then organize a referendum a few elections on so that we have had the experience and can talk about the subject in full knowledge of the facts?