Procedure and House Affairs committee  No. Anything that has to do with the investigation of election offences is the role of the Commissioner of Canada Elections. He is now part of the public prosecution branch. That's money that they've been asking for.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The discussion is of a technical nature, taking place between my officials and those in the Privy Council who support Minister Gould.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Correct. They're public servants who work in the Privy Council Office.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We said it was all major changes to—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That also includes the recommendations this committee has been supporting that are not part of Bill C-33.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Correct.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would distinguish between changes to the law that provide discretion to the Chief Electoral Officer, which we may leverage at any point down the road to improve services to Canadians, to voters, to parties, and to candidates. That discretion may or may not be leveraged for the next election, depending on where we are are in timing.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Certainly, I can say that officials at the Privy Council Office and officials at Elections Canada have been engaging over the last several months, and we've been providing some technical advice on the legislation, not policy advice, which we provide to this committee, but technical advice on the options for legislation that they're looking into.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We've made recommendations through this committee on their roles and two aspects that we'd like to see improved on the third party regime. One is the scope of activities that are being regulated. Currently, it's only election advertising activities. There's a broader range of campaigning activities that should be captured.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I can't say when it closes until we see the full package of legislation, and when we do, as I said, we'll work with this committee and look at the implementation options. Obviously, our preference would have been for the legislation to have been introduced much earlier and passed at this point, so that we could make implementations in a manner that is optimal.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't think there are any unusual numbers of complaints in those reports. Accessibility is a fairly broad topic; it includes accessibility for people with disabilities, as well as accessibility for ordinary Canadians who find the distance may be too long to get to the polls. That's one key area of work for the next election: to reduce the travel distance for Canadians going to the polls, in particular in rural areas.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Some of it will depend on the legislative changes. As always, we like to do simulated elections with youth, and that's still very much in the cards, so we're working on that. We've been engaging teachers across the country to develop new civic education materials and programs to support teachers in the classrooms.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We provide it directly to the teachers. We are also working with provinces. This is an area of collaboration moving forward. Provinces also have direct contacts with the schools, and the materials should be coordinated. To a certain degree we can leverage each other's resources to improve the overall quality of the materials we have.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's a mix of online and simple artifacts that support teachers.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We've been making efforts to improve the voting process at the polls through the introduction of some technology at advance polls to speed up and reduce wait times in urban and semi-urban areas. But in rural areas we see long distances to the polls, and we're working to address that at the next election.