Thank you very much.
In our view, this bill is really a step in the right direction. We see once again the extent of participation by unions and businesses in the political system. That's the reason why, in discussions on Bill C-24, we proposed that the $1,000 amount be completely eliminated, because we thought it posed a problem at the technical level and with regard to perception.
It is true that Canada is ahead of a number of developed democracies as regards its political financing legislation, something we should be proud of. However, we still have work to do.
It's also true that the new limits will force us, as political parties, to go after contributions from a larger number of individuals. I think that's a good thing.
When as political parties we are able to simply rely on a handful of donors to give significant contributions, we don't broaden our base or appeal; we don't engage a larger number of people in the political system. So we believe a lower limit is very healthy, and we also recommend it in the discussions regarding Bill C-24.
There are a few recommendations, however, we would make in terms of amendments. One of the nice aspects of this particular piece of legislation is that the $1,000 limit on individual contributions is divided between the local and federal entities of the party, which means that if an individual wants to give $1,000 to their local riding association they can do so, and then give $1,000 to their federal party. This means that within a political party we're not fighting ourselves for the same donor dollars, which is definitely a healthy benefit in this legislation.
However, one of the problems with this particular piece of legislation is that in effect what happens in a number of our parties—certainly in the major parties and in some of the minor ones as well, I would argue—is that the federal parties receipt donations for many of our local entities for credit card or other such donations. For example, a riding association may decide to submit an individual donor's $500 contribution on a credit card to the federal party, so that we can process the donation, instead of 308 ridings having to create their own credit card systems and so on. As a result, we receive the contribution and transfer the money back to the riding. It's all very transparent, and we know how the money flowed. At the end of the day, it allows us to save a lot on the financial administration fees that many of our volunteer organizations would end up having.
The problem with this division now is that if the federal party is receipting all those contributions, a person hits his or her maximum contribution with the federal party before doing so at the riding or local level. So we would recommend that in the same way the act currently provides for federal leadership to have the ability to receipt contributions on behalf of another entity, we be able to do the same with riding associations.
This is particularly important regarding another new provision of this legislation, which is that donations over $20 cannot be made in cash. We believe the accountability of this is very important. The transparency, the paper trail, and so on are very important aspects, but the fact is that many of our local entities, which receipt contributions, are required at that point to either have credit card facilities, or people must bring cheques with them to events and so on. This is a concern that needs to be taken into account, and we hope that by amending the legislation to allow $1,000 to be receipted federally—of course, with proof that it's actually going to the benefit of a particular riding—that this be considered.
On the elimination of corporate and union contributions, we fear that it may be subject to charter challenge too. I believe in part that Bill C-24 allowed limited contributions to prevent this sort of problem from happening. However, instead of simply abandoning the idea of eliminating those contributions—because we believe it's a good step—we would recommend that you do what is currently done in the act regarding unincorporated associations, which are allowed to solicit individual contributions up to a maximum of $1,000 in a particular year. This allows corporations and unions to have a political role, if you will, without being seen as having an influence.