Mr. Speaker, the government is once again trying to impose an election act gag law on the voters of Canada.
The House leader for the government says that he needs a gag law because the parties and candidates have limits on what they can spend. The real reason for the gag law though is to try to prevent organizations like the National Citizen's Coalition from bringing the voting records and performance of MPs to the attention of voters during election campaigns.
But third party advertising would simply vanish all by itself if parliament was a place of the people where MPs voted the way their constituents told them to. The minister could put a stop to third party advertising simply by working to reform our dysfunctional parliament so that it is no longer a place of the parties where the outcome of every vote is known before the debates begin.
The minister's efforts are misdirected against third party spending. He should stop trying to treat the symptom instead of the cause and abandon his ill-advised gag law before the courts do it for him yet again for the third time.