Procedure and House Affairs committee  I don't think I have anything to add on this question.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No. I'm not quite sure how one would look into it. Elections Canada are the people who are in the best position to know whether they can get the proper personnel in place to run such a two-day event, and presumably what the added costs would be. I suppose the facilities are already established and are already provided for and rented.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Personally, I think it would have some effect, but I don't think any one of us is maintaining that this would have a dramatic effect or that it would solve the problem in some sense. It might be an incremental benefit. I don't think it needs to be an either/or situation. The other things that are mentioned about improving registration, improving access, more polling stations, all of these I think would help as well, but since this bill is directed at this particular suggestion, I am simply indicating that I personally think this would have some impact.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I will comment on a couple of these items. On the matter of when people make up their minds, the national election surveys have shown almost from the beginning that about a quarter of the people who vote claim to make up their minds on election day or very shortly before. Presumably, when the stimulus occurs, they will make a decision.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Are you familiar with that one? It's detailed there where a lot of these places are, and indeed, these are associated with higher turnout weekend voting.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  My focus, I think, would not be on doing much to increase the advance polling days prior to the stage just before the election. I like the idea of focusing on that and opening all the polling stations, as this bill proposed to do. I would suggest opening them for the regular election hours.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. There is research that shows the countries that do hold elections on weekends...and there are quite a number of countries that either hold elections on weekend days or declare election day a holiday. I believe there's a study, by André Blais, which is available to this committee, that goes into this in some detail.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. My affiliation is with the political science department at Carleton. For many years I've worked on studies of voting, with a kind of sideline on participation and non-voting, which in more recent years has taken more prominence than the voting in my own work. I want to say just a couple of things in introduction here.