Chair, very quickly, through you, because I really want to spend a lot more time talking about it, I'll give you a piece so you can see where I'm headed with it.
Their motion talks about the in-and-out scheme, the election financing scheme, which would mean following the election financing laws, and yet we have other election financing laws on loans that must be paid back in a reasonable amount of time and not just written off. Yet we don't want to open our books and talk about those. So I'm hoping, Chair, that to you there's relevance there.
We seem to want to nitpick and pick and choose the pieces of election financing we do want to talk about, and yet we don't want to open up the whole election financing act, which is truly the deal of this committee—to look at election financing and the running of elections in Canada in its totality, rather than just to nitpick and to pick and choose the little pieces that might give me a hunk of mud to sling at the other guy.
Those, Chair, are my thoughts on where the relevance is on that. I just want to throw it out that there are still some other election financing pieces out there from their last leadership race—some fairly significant and outstanding loans—and I believe the next report is due in June on how they've retired those loans. In fact, they are supposed to be all retired by that date, and if they're not, they actually would be, if I'm not mistaken, assumed to have been improper donations. They would become donations because they're in fact not paying them off.
If we're going to get to that end, as much as I talked about the bit of hypocrisy with the ethics chair and then not wanting to open their books, there's another piece of the books that I think, if we threw them open, we'd have a chance to look at—other things.
The other piece also, Chair, is we can also go back to the findings of Justice Gomery. There were still some real pieces in those findings that talked about election financing. There's still a lot of money certainly that Justice Gomery spoke of, and the trail hasn't been connected there either. I believe $40 million is the amount that was not found, and we can only assume it went into election financing someplace too. If those books came open, maybe we could look at that too. I think perhaps that's the reason they don't want to open the books, because of what comes jumping out when we do open them.
I did mention some of the affidavits that we've made on elections financing. Just to clarify what I had said earlier, because I did not have this book in front of me and now I do, it talks about the transfer of funds and election advertising.
If we could talk about campaign ads being national in scope, which I mentioned earlier, it says “election advertising” means:
the transmission to the public by any means during an election period of an advertising message that promotes or opposes
—because sometimes we do put ads out that oppose another candidate or one of their views—
a candidate, including one that takes a position on an issue with which a registered party or a candidate is associated.
That sure sounds like that's what most of these people have done, or what we've done. The identification of “election advertising” is:
All election advertising that promotes or opposes a candidate, including taking a position on an issue with which a registered party or candidate is associated, must indicate who authorized it....
I think we've shared before that we've certainly followed those rules too, Chair. They're asking for us to do this investigation, and yet I want to read into the record, of course, why the investigation is not necessary, and this is certainly stating it clearly out of the Elections Canada handbook. I don't think there's anybody on the other side who is going to deny that we did these things.
I waited and nobody did, so I guess they're not denying we followed the rules of Elections Canada.
If it's clear that we followed the rules of Elections Canada, I'm not certain why we need to do the investigation of the in-and-out piece, and why we aren't talking about Bill C-6 instead.
I've talked about election financing and the rules on election financing. But the other thing we're talking about is regional ad buys. We've talked a bit about how you can't do an ad in a local area for the national party—I think that's the scheme they're talking about. That is, of course, a scheme; to them it's always a scheme.
In the past I've certainly done a fair number of radio buys. You're always happy when the radio station has as great a reach as possible. But if it's an election advertising situation and you're trying to reach only one riding, there's no wall at the edge of that riding to stop radio signals from flowing into another riding. It just doesn't happen. Radio signals go where they go. If someone has the appropriate radio station on, it comes in.
That's why we were always asked to put a tag on it to say it was truly Joe Preston advertising in Elgin—Middlesex—London. Even though it might have been heard in one of the other London ridings, it was me making a statement about myself, another candidate, or an issue of my own party or another party. I paid for the piece that was spilling into or playing in Elgin—Middlesex—London; however, it may have gone other places. That's how regional ad buys happen.
As an example, a group around Edmonton bought radio ads that covered all of those ads. Of course, they may have been tagged at the bottom that they were for the member from Edmonton—Sherwood Park, but they might have spilled into another Edmonton riding. The next day it would have been that member's name on them.
We just want to clear this up. I can't stop the paper boy from delivering to the guy next door, even though I've paid for the ad in Elgin—Middlesex—London. The London Free Press covers all of London. They don't put out a separate section for my riding; they cover all of London. Although I may have paid for an ad hoping to reach voters in my riding, it will certainly reach other ridings. If I've spoken of issues that apply to other ridings, my party may benefit from the ad that was placed in the newspaper and went to other ridings, but it was not the intent to do so. The intent was for me to advertise. Walls don't go up and we don't stop the paper boy from delivering just because I have an ad in the paper today.
Part of what they're asking us to look at is that scheme. They feel we've spent money locally on national advertising that should have only been national. Well, we can't help it. The newspaper goes where the newspaper goes. Radio signals go where radio signals go. TV shows on cable now go around the country.
In one of my other conversations with this group, I said we used to be able to isolate test markets in this country very clearly. We could test products, whether in a political field or a retail field. You could feel safe that if you ran a TV ad in the Winnipeg market, for example, it wouldn't go anywhere else and people knew it was only there. But that doesn't happen any more. When you buy an ad on CanWest Global or CTV, it goes across the country. It's not about the one little market any more. There are associated radio stations and TV stations.
I'd like to come back to the beginning. We're really talking here about the....