Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to the witnesses for being here today.
Mr. Côté, let me start with you, sir. I was very interested in your observations about political donations and limits on donations. I used to envy Quebec, because I felt it had the best legislation associated with political contributions. It seemed to me Quebec recognized that businesses and unions would have a disproportionate amount of influence over the political process because they were able to donate far more money; in other words, that it was anti-democratic or less democratic to have businesses able to buy elections, as it were. We certainly have had that problem in the rest of Canada.
So I was rather surprised to hear you say, sir, that you don't recommend banning contributions altogether. If I understood you correctly, sir, your reasoning was that businesses will find a way around the laws, and therefore we shouldn't have those rules. That doesn't seem like a satisfactory reason to disregard the ethical issue we were dealing with. Wouldn't you say we should have better enforcement of the rules, rather than give up on the rules? Is the principle not worth the extra effort to fight for it, if you will?
Perhaps I could ask both parties to answer.