Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. You've covered a lot of ground. On the last point, I think the agreements hang together as a whole entity. This was also what Prime Minister Mulroney said about the Charlottetown Accord, which had eight fundamental different areas, from developing aboriginal self-gove

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Two questions, and the second one is a real tough one. The first one is, what would be the appropriate subjects to have a ballot question on? When I was drawing up my act, I discussed this with a lot of parliamentarians and came to the conclusion, after a lot of thought, that i

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, they should. And you can provide that in the act. My private member's bill talked about the need to declare whether this was going to be binding or non-binding. What actually took place in 1992 on the Charlottetown Accord, under the Canada Referendum Act, was in fact a non-

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think you're underselling yourself, sir.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. Perhaps that's already been largely accomplished in this book, The People's Mandate. Pages 204 to 212 are more or less your five pages.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That covers everything from the subject of the referendum to the creation of what I call the public consultation council. This is one of the things you'll be getting into--enforcement and arbitration of issues during the period of the referendum, the issuing of the writs, the pol

Procedure and House Affairs committee  --the two plus one, the three changes, in answer to Marlene Jennings.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  They're confusing to everybody. You could do a great service to the nation if you actually could define it in the act. You know, this is Canada. What we call a “taxicab” is called a “taxi” in Britain and a “cab” in New York. We say “tin can” in Canada. In Britain they say “tin o

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's an excellent question, and thank you. I think the way to deal with that is to establish two or three fundamental criteria that the committee would feel, going into this, are the overriding principles that really matter. One could be in relation to the citizen's ability to

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Ultimately this is an act of Canada for Canadians. So where there are lessons to be learned from provinces, why would we not learn them? But at the end of the day, this is not a provincial legislature; this is the Parliament of Canada. The law has to be created and crafted as bes

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. Harmonization is interesting. We've had in this country since at least the 1920s the uniformity commission, where they're trying to get uniformity in provincial statutes, whether it's the securities legislation, company law, or so on. That's not really what we're talking abo

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Really, it's called best practices. Some provinces have gone down this road and have the scars and got the court cases to decide it. I don't think there are that many issues, frankly, to be concerned about. What is a real issue is the political culture, and that is the real prob

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes—dumb it up. Everybody was enjoined to never waver from the two key messages. One, this legislation is a precautionary measure. That number one message about the 1992 Referendum Act from the Government of Canada, that it was a precautionary measure, tells you all you need to

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I agree with you, Mrs. DeBellefeuille, that federal and provincial legislation should be harmonized to the greatest possible extent. That is why, for this bill, I found certain models, such as the Quebec Referendum Act, the bill drafted by the Trudeau government, as well as certa

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I would have to say Quebec's Referendum Act, first because it articulates clear principles. The provisions governing the actual process are quite clear, but not as specific as they are in section 5 of the federal act. The Quebec legislation is a model, not just in terms of clarit