Thank you again for inviting us to appear before the committee.
First, let me say that the New Democratic Party of Canada supports most of the aspects of this bill. We believe that the legislation will help to level the playing field when it comes to our electoral system and more particularly election financing. We are delighted to see that you are studying this issue.
There are a few items that I'd like to highlight in terms of either possible amendments or suggestions to improve the bill. Some of them have been made by the Chief Electoral Officer, so I won't spend too much time on those, but I'm certainly going to just highlight one of the issues of accessibility.
It has been mentioned before that the guarantee of $1,100 is a real concern, because if you're going to get a loan, and in most cases riding associations will go out and get somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000 on average to borrow, in fact somehow the number of guarantors makes it almost impossible for a bank to be able to do its due diligence of the guarantors and this sort of thing.
Having spoken to Vancity Credit Union, one of the witnesses you would have been able to hear from, they felt quite confident that in fact they would not need the same number of guarantors exactly as you'd find in the total loan. They feel that elements of that don't need to be guaranteed. They feel quite confident with the business case in a lot of ridings, particularly those getting rebates. So in fact that isn't as much of a concern as it might be for a lot of members of the committee.
But I would like to highlight the possibility, if you will, of extending the guarantor to three years of annual contribution limit. So essentially, if it were today, $3,300 could be guaranteed. If for whatever reason there was a default on the loan and that became a contribution, the contribution would then be deemed to be over those three years. So basically a person is not exceeding their contribution limits, but in fact you're allowing a little bit more of a cushion on the guarantees. So it's one of the suggestions that I think you might want to keep open. It doesn't open up the loophole any wider, but at the same time keeps that as a bit of an option.
The second point deals with fairness. I don't spend a lot of time reviewing all of the reports from candidates and riding associations, but I do have access to the loan agreements for all of the parties. There is often quite a discrepancy in the interest rates.
While it is easy to establish the fair market value for an election sign, which is a commodity, interest rates on loans vary according to the individual. I think there should be a clearly-established minimum interest rate.