It's very important to understand that our political system is such that two types of parties exist: the one that exists outside Parliament and the one inside Parliament. Today, in Canada, that is the reason why the one outside Parliament is not in the House.
I think that fact is really important to acknowledge. These two parties operate in parallel. The registered political party does not exist within the halls of Parliament. That's why we have ethics commissioners and strict rules about using parliamentary resources for the purposes for the party outside Parliament, the registered political party.
We have parties within Parliament that do not exist outside of Parliament; these are the recognized parties in the House of Commons recognized under the Parliament of Canada Act, and we use public money to fund these parties for partisan purposes. But they are two separate, parallel sets of parties. I think the bill simply acknowledges that the second of these two parties, that is the party within Parliament, has a unique role to play in our system, has unique rights, and that this role and those rights need to be clarified in writing.
The two work in concert with each other, so I think both parties would and do have the right to review the leader. The bill is silent about the election of the permanent leader of the registered political party and, in effect, by being silent ensures that the current practice in Canada of having members of a registered political party, either through a convention or through “one member, one vote” or through a variety of mechanisms, still has the right to elect the permanent leader of a party and have that leader installed as the leader of the party within Parliament.