Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We propose to replace the waiting period, which is until the 17th day. The reason why we have to wait until the 17th day is that the candidates have to be confirmed. The act currently provides that the candidates refer the workers. So our report will propose that responsibility

Procedure and House Affairs committee  On an exceptional basis, the Chief Electoral Officer may authorize it. We avoid doing so because, ultimately, it often amounts to piracy among constituencies. However, where it becomes necessary, and if the situation lends itself to that, we authorize the recruitment of personnel

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think Elections Canada has a role to play, but I doubt it's the leader. Elections Canada's role is to ensure that electors understand the various voting options available to them. We could discuss at length how to motivate electors to vote, but that gets a bit delicate for an

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's a vicious circle. I don't question that. However, I would say to you that—and this is why our initiatives are based on evaluations of the last election—55% of electors did not vote. They told us why they didn't vote: it wasn't accessible enough; they had schedule conflicts;

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It doesn't have to be during a campaign or just before a campaign.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I will certainly take this under advisement.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We're seeking to work more and more closely with other electoral bodies across the country, provincial and territorial ones. We're already collaborating on a number of areas, such as civic education: rather than each organization running its own program, making those programs mor

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, that's one of the findings that was made during the last general election. I mentioned it in the report immediately following the election and in the evaluation reports. There are administrative measures that we can take. Two problems emerged during the 40th election. The f

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The revising officer, deputy returning officer, scrutineer and clerk positions. These are the main positions for which we have to do a lot of recruitment in very little time.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. We've observed that barely 33% of our election workers are recommended by the political parties. That percentage is constantly declining. Under the act, the returning officer must wait until the 17th day before starting to recruit, independently of the political parties. We'

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Certain recommendations in my report will concern what we call efficiency. We're mainly going to target work organization in the polling stations, where we think it's possible to achieve quite significant economies of scale.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, and the idea is also to improve service to electors.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There will be a series of recommendations concerning efficiency in my report, which will be tabled by mid-June. With regard to shredding, a provision in the act requires that us to bring all material back after an election. That's one thing. The other thing is that we have an agr