I wanted to make some observations. I think this amendment by Mr. Christopherson was very well intended and I want to explain why I don't support it.
I should mention, by the way, that some of the comments I'm going to make are related to a situation that exists when you're in government but doesn't exist for us as an opposition party right now. In opposition, we only have to worry about the leader. He's the only person whose presence is guaranteed at the Leader's Circle event, which is our equivalent of the Laurier Club. Obviously, he'll be there, so we'd record that. However, if you're in government, you have ministers who will potentially be available depending upon the other things going on at the convention. Everybody knows that conventions are very chaotic events. You're dealing with all kinds of things. You have people doing interviews, which are hard to plan, with various media outlets. It's hard to plan which events will be top of mind at the time of a convention. For disclosure purposes, you could list every minister without actually promising the people who are being invited that they'll be there. That seems problematic, and it's one concern.
My more significant reason for not supporting this amendment is that at a convention you already have, by the nature of the event, media present, so it's easy to keep track of who's coming in and out. I think it was Chris Bittle who said that they are somewhat chaotic events in that people are wandering in and out, getting canapés. You may have more than one such event at a convention in order to accommodate people who are arriving at different times and so on, but the key thing is that reporters are there anyway. You have media accreditation. There's no danger of any sort of secret meeting.
Also, you have the largest number of donors who are donating for the traditional reasons. They already believe in the Liberal Party or the Conservative Party. They're willing to give the maximum. They're now a delegate at their convention. You have so many of those people that it would be a very odd time to try to have a quiet meeting with a Chinese billionaire, say. It doesn't seem like the sort of thing that's going to happen. Therefore, I think this is an area that was never a problem to start with.