Thank you for being here today, Minister. I have a couple of questions. I hope we'll have time for both of them.
I think we all remember the 2006 Liberal leadership campaign when many of the candidates in that race used political loans to be able to circumvent the donation limits. In some of those cases, candidates in fact still owe money to campaigns that ended almost a decade ago now.
I'm wondering if you could tell us if and how the fair elections act closes that loophole and helps to keep big money out of politics.
Perhaps you could also address whether in fact those provisions in the act would be retroactive, whether they could actually be applied to the individuals who still have debt from those 2006 campaigns, and what Elections Canada might be able to do to force repayment of those loans.