My first request was that you pass the bill unamended.
I understand that the government is going to table an amendment raising the bar from the lowest level of DM-1 to the highest level of DM-4. However, if the committee is seriously entertaining amendments, if you're going to open up the benchmark, you should be mindful that you haven't heard any evidence to support that proposition. The only evidence you have heard is that the proposed bar set in this bill is too high. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation and the National Citizens Coalition advocated that it should be lowered to $100,000.
I think $100,000 is too low. I think it might have been the right number in 1995 or 1996, whenever Ontario established its sunshine list, but they haven't indexed it for inflation, which incidentally is why this legislation doesn't have a number. It doesn't say $188,000; it says the lowest level of DM-1. If you were inclined to go to $160,000, I would suggest that the words you insert are "the sessional allowance payable to a member of Parliament". The reason the legislation has a category benchmark, as opposed to a number benchmark, is that it automatically indexes it for inflation. As the specific salary goes up, pursuant to that job classification, the disclosure bar automatically rises along with it.