Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I don't like that sort of.... Why ask people something where you're giving them an incentive not to tell the truth? I don't see any particular value in that. I think that should be related to coming back. I do think if somebody doesn't come back for x number of years, whatev

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's not my research, but there are researchers. The best known is a man named Mark Franklin, an American but a comparative expert. He's made that argument, and I think convincingly, that not voting in the first election or the first couple of elections—not everybody, clearly a m

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, and by the way, this relates to that. The question was why are young people voting less. Part of it—that's why I called it The Internet Generation—has to do with sources of information. Civic education becomes more important for the Internet generation because the standard s

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I've been present at elections in other countries and I've seen the same thing. There is something about that, but I don't know how representative a member of Parliament is of the other people of your age group.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  —that voting restriction.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I wasn't very strong on that particular aspect before, and I looked around to see what other countries were doing. On balance, I would like it to be a bit longer, but the numbers, I don't think, would be significantly affected, so I wouldn't slow down the bill to try to amend tha

Procedure and House Affairs committee  What does it replace it with?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Is that right? Then I misread the bill. At this point, a Canadian can...and not return at any point in the interval? Is that really the case?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Wow.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, but remember, the Americans have to pay taxes. They can never have lived in the United States—and I can give you examples of that—and still pay taxes. Maybe that's going too far. Again, it's not something you'd worry about right away, but I think it's worth thinking about.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, that's the nice thing about being Canadian. We don't take the division over politics so seriously, as certain neighbours tend to do. Politics become such a powerful, emotional division that you can imagine a manipulation of external.... In fact, some effort is made to get

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Within the Canadian federal system?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Again, I think more effort should be made on civic education. For those of us who are active provincially, that's really the primary focus. That's where I would put the main focus. It's not here. Here the work of Elections Canada is very important. We're too many people to think

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Exactly.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. It was very hard for me to understand why one would be opposed to that. It's like being opposed to motherhood, at some level.