I'd like the committee to be aware of some of the questions that I would like to pose to Mr. Mayrand, with a view to helping members to decide on my amendment.
First, there are these five factors that he says helped him make his decision. He is unable to point to any documentary evidence to show that he applied these five factors when considering the books of the other parties. He says that he might have sent an e-mail, that he might have made a phone call, that he's not quite sure whom he asked. I would like to know how many people conducted this investigation of the other parties. He hasn't answered any of this.
With respect to the first of the five factors that he lists here, he says that the problem he has with the way the Conservative Party conducted itself is that official agents did not seem to have detailed knowledge of the regional media buy expense. But he refused to show anywhere in the law where it's required that the official agents have detailed knowledge of all of the expenses that are incurred on a campaign.
The only thing that the official agent is required to do is the accounting of the campaign. They don't have to memorize all of the contents of the brochures, nor do they have to know all of the contents of an advertisement. In the cases before us with regard to the Conservative Party, we know that the local campaigns signed off on these advertisements. This is the level of detail that the law requires. I'd like to ask questions about that.
He then says that there was no documentary evidence to establish the existence of a contractual agreement by any of the participating candidates with the supplier Retail Media. There doesn't have to be. It is perfectly allowable for a campaign to purchase services directly from a party. A party can buy $1 million worth of lawn signs and then have local candidates purchase those lawn signs from the party. Those local candidates do not have to have a contractual arrangement with the supplier of those signs; they don't even have to know who that supplier is. All they have to do is make the purchase from the party and then book the expense in their own accounting. That is not only allowed; it is done every day.
Just yesterday, I contacted my campaign manager to find out if that's what we're planning to do. Frankly, I don't even know who we're buying our lawn signs from. It was my plan just to buy them from the central party. That's perfectly normal, perfectly allowable. It happens all the time, and it is expressly legal.
Third, with respect to the representations of the party officials, he says that all arrangements for the purchase were made by the party and the invoices were sent to the party. That's exactly the same as the second point. It is perfectly allowable. This is a question I want to ask him. Is it not perfectly allowable for parties to procure services and then sell those services to their candidates?