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Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 322

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 31, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 322 - May/31/24
Mr. Martin Champoux (Drummond, BQ)
  • May/31/24 1:10:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I want to pick up on a few words that my colleague from London—Fanshawe said. She said that we need to improve politics, be better, and rise above the kind of petty politicking that we see all too often. There are a lot of good things in this bill. A more accessible electoral process is a good thing. The idea of extending advance polling station operations by a few days is a good thing. However, instead of introducing a bill that would have brought the opposition parties together, the government included things like pushing back the election date, which opens the door to legitimate criticism from Canadians who see it as a move by the Liberals to provide pensions to those elected in 2019. Why use a religious holiday as an excuse for a date change, knowing full well how much it would irritate proponents of a secular state who refuse to make unreasonable accommodations on religious grounds? Why put forward a date just six days away from upcoming municipal elections in 1,109 Quebec municipalities, and thus jeopardize Quebec's municipal election process? There could have been a way to create a unifying bill that accommodated the sensitivities of all the parties, but no, they did not do that.
214 words
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