Madam Speaker, I see we only have a minute or two left in Private Members' Business. There is not a lot of time to adequately address Motion No. 318 put forward by my hon. colleague from Fraser Valley.
I find it absolutely unbelievable, not only to members on this side of the House, but indeed to all the people across Canada who are watching at home today that we would even have to have this debate, that we would even have to have this motion put forward by my hon. colleague from Fraser Valley. I certainly applaud his initiative to bring this matter forward.
We are talking about the issue of levelling the playing field at a minimum. The motion as my hon. colleague pointed out says “no less than”. That is a key phrase in the motion itself. It says that in the opinion of this House the government should bring in legislation making the tax deduction for contributions to charitable organizations no less than the tax deduction for contributions to political parties.
In reply or rebuttal, the hon. member from the governing Liberal Party who just spoke is missing the point. He said that if this were to go ahead and we levelled the playing field and treated both exactly the same, that anybody wanting to make a donation to a charity of more than $1,150 in any given year would get no additional tax credit. He is quite correct if we did it exactly the same, but that is not what the motion says. The motion very clearly says no less than.
In the excellent presentation that my hon. colleague from Fraser Valley made in speaking to his private members' motion, and the need to bring this type of legislation forward, he threw out the challenge not only to government members but to members from all the political parties to suggest some options. He said to look at alternatives.
One of the options I would like to discuss is the option of eliminating the tax credit for political parties and reassigning the benefit from that to charities. That type of tax reform would certainly be supported by a lot more Canadians than the present system. The small donors, the average donor, the person who can only donate $50 to any given entity be it a charity or a political party, those are the people we need to target. We need to ensure that it is not a case where $100 to a political party gets a $75 tax credit but $100 to a charity only gets a $17 tax credit. That is the issue. That is the driving force behind this motion and the reason why I am certainly speaking in support of it.