Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
To address the amendment directly, Mr. Chairman, we have never alleged that the problem was with the limits. Elections Canada has found—so I don't think we need to use the word “alleged” because it is a finding of Elections Canada—that the expenses were not incurred by the candidates' campaign, but more properly by the national campaign. That is the issue here, Mr. Chairman. It's not whether the limits were too high or too low or whether the expenses were within the campaigns' limits. In fact, we will argue that the expenses exceed the national campaign limit because Elections Canada has rejected them as having been incurred by the local candidate.
Mr. Reid is very clever and very able at trying to sideline an issue, trying to obfuscate or trying to buy some time. We went around the mulberry bush, Mr. Chairman, in September. The issue is that Elections Canada has found that a number of Conservative candidates, some of whom are sitting members, put on their campaign returns expenses that Elections Canada has held to not be acceptable as incurred by a local campaign. Hence, they have rejected them and refused refunds to those campaigns, 60% of which would have come from taxpayers' money. Elections Canada has refused that. The Conservative Party is, in our view, wasting more taxpayers' money by trying to go to court to buy time, arguing that in fact they are entitled to these bogus refunds.
Mr. Chairman, the reason we want to look at this is that a number of Conservative candidates have actually asked and offered to come and explain why they were bullied into this scheme, why they were told that they had to participate.
Mr. Jean Landry, a Conservative candidate from Quebec, has repeatedly stated in the presence of television cameras that he was forced to go along with this scenario. He didn't think that these actions were legitimate and he indicated that he would like an opportunity to come and publicly testify to the fact that he was forced by the Conservative party to go along with this.
Similarly, last week I received a call from another Conservative candidate, Ms. Fortier, who told me that she wanted to testify. She offered to do so. She called my office to say that she was prepared to testify about this rather nebulous situation.
Mr. Chairman, we want to move forward and avoid the Conservatives' tactics which are merely aimed at delaying the proceedings. In our view, Mr. Reid's amendment totally changes the purpose of this exercise. The issue is not expense limits, but rather why Elections Canada formally refused to reimburse Conservative candidates for expenses incurred for local advertising which, in the opinion of Elections Canada, was really national advertising. Unfortunately, if we tally these expenses, we might find that the Conservative Party exceeded the national expense limit by more than one million dollars. That is the issue.
Mr. Reid is trying to change the issue. It's not about the limits. The issue is a technical one: why Elections Canada believes that 66 Conservative returns...and we believe in fact there are others that Elections Canada should look at, including a Conservative candidate in Guelph, who we saw last night was in fact turfed as a candidate. We believe that campaign also may warrant a review by Elections Canada. And we find it strange that he would simply unceremoniously be dumped as a candidate yesterday, but the Conservative Party can explain why they've moved so far from their grassroots democracy of some years ago.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.