Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. It's a pleasure for me to participate in your work, which deals with an issue I have been interested in for a long time. I followed from afar the 1974 reform, which produced the terrible amalgam formula. I was an undergraduate student at that time. I follow

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If I may, Mr. Chairman, I'm a former servant of Parliament. I was a research officer in the Library of Parliament. It's always an honour for me to come to Ottawa, where I lived for about 12 years, and if possible to throw some help to your proceedings, which I believe are importa

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. Based on the indiscretions that have been going on for 20 or 25 years and that are becoming increasingly common and specific in recent years, including recent months, recent weeks, that is more or less what is going on in Quebec. There is even a court case about this. A law

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, you are flagging a very interesting issue. What Quebec's referendum provides for is that once the referendum question has been passed by the members of the Assembly, members of the Assembly are invited to join either the yes side or the no side. What happened, of course, was

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's quite simple. I will give you an example. In 2003, when Parliament decided to eliminate the ability of companies and unions to give money to political parties, more than half the parties' funding came from those sources. When you take away such significant revenue sources fr

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It will be equal…

Procedure and House Affairs committee  They will tell you that a referendum is an expensive business, because the positions have to be developed, they have to be publicized, leaflets have to be printed, messages have to be presented on television. That's expensive.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I think that this is what will happen. If you allow companies to finance referendum committees, the government will probably not have to get decisively involved. It will not have to provide money.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Right. That may not be a bad idea. Maybe there is too much political spending. On that point, your opinion is as good as mine; maybe there really is too much spending.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's possible. In fact, I think that because it is political parties that make the laws about this, they might want to protect themselves against funding shortfalls. That is also not impossible.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If you think that too much money is spent in politics, and that if the parties' resources are reduced, it is better because they will spend less, that's correct. But I have the impression that the parties might tell you that politics is an expensive business.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Ah! In both cases, it will be the government that...

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In any event, for political parties, that is certainly not what happens. I can tell you, on a side note, that I think it will be increasingly difficult, for reasons I would prefer not to expand on, to persuade large numbers of individuals to give enough money to political parties

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Ours is basically a representative democracy, and the idea that the people could... Usually when you throw an issue to a referendum, it is because it is a hot potato that you don't know what to do with--prohibition and conscription were exactly that--or you need the support of th

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If you are able to get the two governments to agree on the rules for a vote that might require one of them to stay out of Quebec, so much the better. The solution I was thinking of myself was a constitutional amendment. Given the situation that was created in 1992 in Charlotteto