If at a later point you gentlemen have some thoughts on it, I certainly think we'd be interested in hearing them, because it is about being fair and about just ensuring that we have clear rules so there are no “gotcha” moments here for any side. We need to have a fair system.
In light of that as well, I'd like to ask about the issue of gifts. I think as MPs we're probably obsessed, from our point of view. On any given Saturday night we have to go to three or four dinners that people expect us to go to. It's not as though we're getting a benefit from these dinners. Going to them is part of our job. Are those $30 tickets for the dinners personal benefits we're receiving for doing our work? Do we have to start to list all those? Or when the local organization comes and drops off the snow globe, do we have to actually price that? To me that seems like a different issue from one in which someone is giving box tickets to a deputy minister who's picking a contract.
We could lower the threshold for gifts. We could say no gifts at all; pay your own way. That's one option. But it seems there has to be a middle ground, so we clarify what a gift is and what would be seen as undue. I thought you said you didn't have a particular position in terms of the value for dollars, but is there a way we could actually walk through this so there's a little more clarity between the NGO dropping off its gifts and someone really trying to buy your influence?