Mr. Speaker, because of a misunderstanding I spoke before my turn, but my colleague pointed out the difficulty companies, in Quebec in particular, but I suppose it is the same in Canada, have in negotiating with this department. This department has even to some extent paid people so it could understand what it was doing.
The question is often raised in my riding as well: Why is it that it was so difficult to deal with this department? We note, and perhaps this is part of the answer, in the case of the task force on taxation that was established, that the people who will be paid to study the impact of tax havens are in the first place the main users of those tax havens and major contributors to the Liberal Party.
In fact I think the difficulty in gaining access to this department has something to do with whether or not one contributes to the campaign fund. My colleague also pointed out that we-I think it was the member for Richelieu-had already introduced a bill a few years ago relating to party funding by the people. The Parti Quebecois for example is funded under this formula, in other words companies cannot make political donations, and the amounts individuals can give are limited to a maximum and the names of all people who contributed are made public.
We know that the Bloc Quebecois is doing exactly the same thing. Even if the law allowed us to do otherwise, we voluntarily agreed to restrict our fund-raising to the private sector, to avoid business contributions, and to solicit relatively small amounts.
I know that, like myself, my colleague is currently raising funds. We know what this means. It means that, night after night, we go door to door to solicit donations of $10, $15, $20 or $100 if we are lucky from the 200,000 members of the Parti Quebecois or the 100,000 members of the Bloc Quebecois until we reach the goals we have set for ourselves.
In this context, I would like to ask my colleague who knows about such things whether he feels like me that this fund-raising formula for political parties, which was never adopted and against which the Liberals voted-even those from Quebec who are familiar with the impact of this legislation in that province-increases transparency and allows people to buy their own freedom to a certain extent by helping fund political parties in this way.