I want to start off, if I can, following up on what Mr. Reid said, which I thought was a very poignant point, about how it means a lot more to him as a candidate, and therefore to all of us, to get the money sooner rather than later.
I hate to do this to you, but maybe I'll just take advantage of it being my birthday, and you'll allow me a little latitude.
I want to tell you a joke. It actually belongs—to give attribution—to Bud Wildman, who, as any of you would know, was a former Ontario cabinet minister with a huge personality, an amazing guy.
He tells this story—I'll do the accent but I can't do it justice; he did a much better job—about Huey Long back in, I think, the 1920s or 1930s, give or take a couple of decades. He was a governor, and ethics wasn't exactly his long suit. The story goes, or at least the joke goes, that Huey was meeting with a whole lot of his big contributors and he said to them, basically, you can give me a lotta money right now and get a nice big piece of the pie, or you can give me the money a little closer to the election and get a smaller piece of the pie, or you can give me the money after the election and get good government. I like that joke. I've always liked that joke.
I can't do it justice, Bud, but there you are; you live in infamy through your jokes.