Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you to the honourable member for the question.
There are two points that I would make in this regard. If the goal is to increase transparency around who is placed with members of Parliament, using the existing mechanism of regulations on gifts creates two major problems.
The first is that the commissioner's opinion focused extensively on a juxtaposition between paid interns and unpaid volunteers, without considering that intermediate category that Dr. Dance touched upon, which is the unpaid intern, those who are systematically recruited and placed in specific MPs' offices but are unpaid. Even in the remarks to the committee, again, the commissioner's focus was on the salary paid. It creates a situation whereby certain organizations that might favour certain policy objectives could continue to place people with MPs despite this.
The second challenge is that organizations that are advocating can continue to provide paid interns, provided that they don't register to lobby. For example, GreenPAC is an organization that seeks to improve policy around the environment through the achievement of a greater proportion of environmental advocates in public office. It endorses candidates, but it does not register to lobby. It clearly has a public policy goal, but because it doesn't register, it's allowed to operate internship programs, whereas Equal Voice, which seeks to promote women in Parliament, cannot run an internship program because it does register to lobby.
You have these odd juxtapositions of transparency that are being placed through the use of the existing mechanism.