Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The concern I'm raising is primarily around finding a very advantageous interest rate so an individual isn't essentially creating loans or other things that are significantly below the average ability of an individual to be able to get an interest rate. I'm proposing a minimum, but I would also be quite open to seeing a maximum.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  First of all, thank you for that. In fact, Vancity's practice in the past has been to rely more heavily on rebates and also on the overall ability, as with any loan, of a particular riding or a particular candidate to raise money themselves. There's a whole bunch of factors, as they put it, that go into play.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'll just quickly summarize the point that while fair market value is relatively simple to calculate when it comes to signs and office space and these sorts of things, interest rates have a lot to do with the individuals and the guarantors and a lot of other issues. In fact, sometimes you can consider to be getting a fair market value for an interest rate that could actually be very low, relatively speaking.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you again for inviting us to appear before the committee. First, let me say that the New Democratic Party of Canada supports most of the aspects of this bill. We believe that the legislation will help to level the playing field when it comes to our electoral system and more particularly election financing.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  My name is Éric Hébert-Daly and I am the Federal Secretary for the New Democratic Party.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  On the special voting regulations, in particular, I think one of the problems we have is this period between E minus 6 and election day. For whatever reason, if you intend to vote on election day but are hospitalized, or there are other problems, there's that window of disenfranchisement, as I call it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. As regards nomination races, people can legally buy memberships for other people, and that's considered as a contribution by them. This procedure already exists, although I find it somewhat bizarre. I believe this arrangement can be used to enable a 12-year-old to become a member of a party because, in general, 12-year-olds don't have enough income on their own.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Once again, it's all about making sure we're not disenfranchising people, particularly those who aren't as well off as others, or seniors, or young people. I think photo ID per se is where we start crossing the line into the area you and we are concerned about. As long as I think there is some mechanism by which people can swear an oath or be able to do something along those lines that actually....

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Godin raises a fairly important question concerning the representatives of political parties. That appears in the candidate's return, but it's now required that that be done in the candidate's personal expense return. That means it isn't accounted for in that political party's election expenses at the local level.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I'd like to add this. If there is to be a table where checking is done and the representatives are there to check and attest that the checking procedure is official, then perhaps it's less important to have people at each table.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Concerning online voting, there's a part of me—and this is by no means an official party position—that worries considerably about online voting in the sense that.... Right now, in fairness, special voting regulations mean that people can be voting in their houses right now. At the same time, there's something less concrete and I fear more subject to...not fraud, necessarily, but more subject to problems.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. I think it goes an extra step beyond my personal level of comfort. On your previous point—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That part of the problem, to some degree, is that we need to do targeted revision in a bigger way. I think this has been mentioned before: we have areas of high turnover, particularly in urban areas, where there are ridings that turn over every year. Even when we have minority Parliaments that have elections every year, it seems to mean that people are moving, and that sort of thing.