Colleagues, let's start our meeting this morning. I want to advise members right off the bat that the meeting will be held in public.
As well, I want to advise that you have received this morning the information from the Chief Electoral Officer and Elections Canada. That was circulated this morning. Hopefully, you've had an opportunity to read that. A second copy is being circulated to members right now, just in case that might drum up some questions for our witness this morning.
Colleagues, the order of business today will be to pose any questions we may have regarding Bill C-54 to our witness today, who I'll introduce in just a moment. At the conclusion of these questions, and I'm certainly hoping we will have time, we have two other pieces of business.
The first one, following the witness, will be dealing with the subcommittee's report on the conflict of interest code.
On the second one Monsieur Guimond has just approached me and we will give him some time at the end of that, following that, if in fact we still need the time. I will offer that to Monsieur Guimond.
Colleagues, pursuant to the orders of reference of Monday, May 28, the committee will now resume its consideration of Bill C-54, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act (accountability with respect to loans) 2007.
I want to advise the members that we did in fact contact all the witnesses that the steering committee, and ultimately the committee itself, agreed to, and as the committee agreed, those witnesses who could appear would appear here on Thursday. Those witnesses who could not appear would be requested to submit something in writing, so that we could review that for our Tuesday meeting, and then we would start clause-by-clause on Tuesday.
I have to tell members that Equal Voice was in fact e-mailed. We do have acknowledgment that the e-mail was received. However, we have had no response whatsoever from Equal Voice.
The Supreme Court judge we were trying to reach was not reachable, and the other gentleman is simply not available.
Elections Ontario has accepted our offer to appear here and has sent to us this morning a witness whom we can question.
As to the other witnesses who have responded or we've been in touch with, again, I just want to repeat that they've been asked to submit so that we can get their opinions on this issue.
Without further delay, colleagues, let me introduce Mike Stockfish. He's the director of election finances for Elections Ontario.
Madam Redman, please.