I understand that, but in the case where someone does spend some vast sum over the amount, what you recommended in your recommendations to us was that there would be some kind of compensation on more than a dollar-per-dollar basis, that they would have to pay back a larger amount. When this committee discussed it, you were not part of those discussions, but we discussed the idea that, as the amount of overspending is larger, there should be a higher multiple in order to make the punishment fit the crime, as it were.
Here what we're talking about is not an actual crime or offence. We're talking about a failure to provide a document that might be used in determining that the person, the candidate, might have infringed some part of the legislation. Yet the penalty is far more severe the way you've interpreted the law.
I look at the law, and you're right that it's a little ambiguous, but if I were in your position, I could say what subsection 463(1) means is that I send a letter to an elected candidate who has failed to provide a document that I think he should provide after we disputed about it in court, and after all court mechanisms have run out. Instead, you decided at the front end to say he can't sit, and you sent your letter.
What you've done is you've taken the most aggressive available option, the most aggressive available interpretation. I would suggest to you that that is inappropriately harsh.