Mr. Speaker, I am very pleased that my colleague from Parkdale--High Park has spoken about some of the successes reflected in Bill C-2 before us and also has highlighted some of the omissions.
It seems particularly appropriate this week that we acknowledge the tremendous contribution of the former member from Ottawa Centre, Ed Broadbent, in the work that he did around both electoral reform and the cleaning up of patronage politics in this country. It is especially appropriate this week that we acknowledge the portions of Bill C-2 that are very much attributable to some of his earlier work in the House, but also that we underscore the importance of proportional representation, because Ed Broadbent is about to be honoured very publicly on Thursday for his significant contribution to electoral reform.
That work by the former member for Ottawa Centre will be well recognized by members of the House who had the thrill, as many of us did, to sit with him in the House over that period of a year and a half prior to the last election, when he did not re-offer.
What is probably less understood and known by many members of the House is that much of the early anti-patronage work and the work to clean up electoral party financing was accomplished in a previous minority government, a minority government in which the New Democratic Party leader, David Lewis, pushed very hard and in fact got a concession from the then Liberal government to introduce election financing legislation that for the first time required full disclosure of both sources and amounts of political party contributions.
I think it is not surprising that many of the improvements in this government bill have been brought about by very good work in that same David Lewis-Ed Broadbent tradition by my colleague from Winnipeg Centre, ably supported by the current member for Ottawa Centre.
In the few remaining moments, I want to ask the member about the issue of trust funds. It is clear that the member for Winnipeg Centre was very instrumental in pushing for much tougher regulations and provisions in the law governing the use of trust funds. To this day in Nova Scotia, unbelievably, the Liberal Party still finances its election campaigns with ill-begotten trust funds from the biggest electoral party financing scandal in the history of the province.
With respect to trust funds, is it the member's view that this is an important achievement in the bill before us, notwithstanding the omission of a number of other issues, which she has already noted?