I wanted to come back to the issue regarding candidates' debates and the proposal that expenses incurred in organizing these debates be treated as a non-monetary contribution.
Mr. Arnold, you said--and I was surprised to hear this because I would have thought the contrary to be true--that this is already going on in practice and that the proposal would just codify an existing practice.
I'm only basing this on my own experience in my own constituency, but we had eight all-candidates debates in the last election and eight in the one before. That's four times now. You can do the math.
I've never had any attempt, to my knowledge, to take these costs and require us to include them in our return. Now, I haven't spoken with my opponents, but I wonder if you might have been mistaken there, or maybe I just misunderstood.