Mr. Speaker, with respect, the fact that a member of Parliament agrees with part of a bill, while at the same time taking care to outline a number of serious problems with the bill that need more exposure, including through debate, is hardly an argument for shutting down debate.
The second thing I would like to reference, and ask my colleague to comment on, is that all of this started in December when the minister tabled the bill and presented media and press release materials that gave the impression this was in response to the Frank judgment in the court system, which prohibited preventing any Canadian abroad from voting. The current rule in the Canada Elections Act says that if one has been away for more than five years, one cannot vote, but that rule was struck down on the basis of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The only action the government had to take on that was simply to eliminate the rule. Nothing had to change.
There are already a bunch of rules in the act for how those who have been away for less than five years to vote from abroad. There is no nexus whatsoever between this bill and respecting the Frank judgment. Rather, it is the exact opposite, because the Frank judgment opens up the field of voting for citizens abroad to far more people than had been the case before. The government, obviously, suddenly became worried and created much more onerous rules for voting from abroad for everybody, including for those who have always had the right—who have been away for less than five years.
I would kindly ask my colleague across the way not to buy into the minister's spin that the bill would implement the Frank judgment. It does not at all.