Mr. Chairman, I would urge the committee to support the $2,000. It's been my experience—I'm sure similar to that of many others—that many people say to me that they'll be making a contribution to my campaign and to other campaigns.
In urban areas there are family relationships and interests in specific issues that lead people to support, my goodness, even the Green Party—when I say “even the Green Party”, I don't mean “even the Green Party”, but our party, in addition to the Conservative Party and the Green Party. People will make those contributions. The spirit of this amendment is to increase that flexibility so that people can engage the democratic process.
If we're approaching it from two positions, one, that contributions are bad, just like lobbying is bad, so it's a nefarious activity that just has to be illegal, then, okay, I think that's wrong-headed. And two, if we're approaching it with the viewpoint of encouraging people to participate in the democratic process by attending conventions, my goodness, to go to the convention in December is going to be several hundreds of dollars. If you want to encourage the average person to get into the process, he or she is not going to be able to afford that.
So I would argue, if I can use that term, that the $2,000 is in keeping with what the statistics in Quebec have indicated is reasonable. There hasn't been any advice that's been given that illegal activities have taken place with respect to paying for privilege and access beyond that defined in the act, so I don't know what we're arguing about. It's in the spirit that the government has put this forward. It's coming down from a personal contribution, I think, of $4,000, and the government is coming down to the $1,000 from the Bill C-22 recommendations. Let's saw it off. That $2,000 sounds pretty good, in the middle, to me.