I'm certainly not trying to belabour this, but I would add a few points. First of all, we regulate political parties. We regulate them extensively. This bill regulates them more with respect to leadership and nomination races, and quite appropriately so.
We also regulate third parties. There's a fairly comprehensive regime provided for in the Canada Elections Act. It's not as if anyone can set up a third party and do whatever they want when engaging in what are regulated activities during the pre-election and election periods. In light of that, it seems entirely consistent to provide that third parties, which cannot spend any amount of money—they're limited in terms of how much money they can spend during the election period and the pre-election period—can use only funds from individual Canadians. We can say to them, “As a safeguard to ensure that that's the source of the funds, you're going to set up a separate bank account, and you're going to provide filings that demonstrate that that's where those monies were used for regulated activities.”
That's what this bill does, except for this big, gaping hole. It would also put third parties, in that sense, in line with political parties, which can use only funds from individual Canadians. That's been the case now in Canada for more than 20 years.
With respect to the charter arguments, these are arguments in a vacuum. There's been no case authority cited as an example. There's really been no effort made to establish what precisely the charter arguments against this type of amendment are and why they wouldn't sustain or pass muster under section 1, at the very least. I don't even think you'd need to get to section 1.
I would just ask, officials, if you have any expectations of how many third parties will be able to avail themselves of the 10% exemption and if you could give any examples.