Thank you very much, Chair and Mr. Van Loan.
We'll all resist the temptation to make puns on Minister Van Loan.
Thank you for being here and for bringing this forward, together with your set of other approaches for democratic reform.
We've had an opportunity to discuss many of those in the past and will in the future, as we all tackle this joint opportunity to tighten up our political system, including the political financing.
Let me say by way of preamble that Bill C-26, brought in during January 2004 by the former Liberal government, was perhaps the most dramatic change in political financing in Canadian history, creating one of the tightest political financing systems in any democratic country. This is taking that a step further, as did Bill C-2, with respect to limits.
One question I have is with respect to that. In Bill C-24, which didn't go as far as Bill C-2—in the sense that it allowed union and corporation loans at the level of $1,000, which is pretty limited, but left the individual, basic unit of democracy at $5,000—part of the government's consideration at the time was not to unduly infringe on the political, democratic rights of individuals under the charter to express themselves and take part in a meaningful way in the political process.
This was, of course, as you may recall, part of the Liberal opposition's concern in Bill C-2. It wasn't to do with corporations or unions because their contribution was going from $1,000 to zero—it effectively was zero, anyway, at $1,000—but with individuals it caused some concern that it might unduly restrict people's exercising of democratic rights.
When we look at this bill, my observation is that if someone were to enter a national leadership contest, for instance—it could be the Canadian Alliance in 2002, the Conservative Party in 2004, or the Liberal Party in 2006—understanding that it's a national contest to be contested over many months...to apply this to a person who at that point is not backed up by a political association, or, I might also add, but on a much smaller scale, someone who's seeking the nomination to be a candidate for an election and isn't a sitting member and doesn't have a riding association, and looking at the potential costs of engaging in, for instance, an 11-month leadership campaign cross-country, and thinking of the amount of money that must be spent and has been spent in those contests by all parties, and then thinking about who might be capable of getting a loan from a financial institution.... My concern is that for some individuals who are not wealthy enough to either be credit-worthy themselves to raise the amount of money that would be necessary for that sort of contest or who have the friends who would be able to guarantee that loan, this would effectively be a barrier to that person's taking part in that leadership contest or, on a smaller scale, a nomination contest.
The flip side of it is that we're handing over to financial institutions, really, the power to decide who can enter those contests and who can't, by virtue of their need—understandably, given their responsibilities and the way this is written—to have it guaranteed or to find the person credit-worthy themselves.
It doesn't take much to imagine a large group of people who are incapable of entering those sorts of contests.
I noted, Minister, in your introductory remarks, on six occasions I believe, you mentioned that one of the intentions of this bill is to limit the influence of the powerful and the rich and such. I'm worried about the people who aren't rich and powerful, who may face a barrier to enter those types of contests when they don't have means themselves.
I wonder if you could comment on that.