Mr. Speaker, I listened to the speech just made by the member opposite and I know he has made this type of speech in the past, indicating that he really does not like third party advertising. I think it is most unfortunate that he somehow misrelates spending to voting. He thinks somehow that the amount of money spent determines the outcome of an election or a referendum or any electoral event. That is simply not the case. There is not a scrap of evidence from anywhere in the world showing that the amount of money spent on an electoral event can guarantee the outcome.
We can look at the Charlottetown accord, for example, as one of the cases. It was a big referendum here in Canada, where the yes side spent 10 times as much as the no side but the no side won. There are studies of referendums in Switzerland and in the United States. In all the states that have referendums there have been studies done comparing the amount of money spent by people arguing the yes side or the no side. There is absolutely no correlation between the amount of money spent and the electoral success, because it is the issue that counts. It has nothing to do with the amount of money spent. If voters have a valid issue to consider, they will consider the issue and they will make the right decision, because the voters are not stupid.
I think one of the things, unfortunately, that the member opposite assumes is that the voters are so stupid that they can be bought, that somebody who comes into the riding and spends 10 times as much money automatically has 10 times as much success. As I said, there is not a scrap of evidence to show that is the case.
There is plenty of evidence and there are plenty of studies from everywhere in the world where there are democracies that exactly the opposite is the case and that it is the issue that determines the outcome.
The member defeats his own case by talking about the charities that organized opposition to him in his own riding. He complains that they organized and they ganged together against him, but he was re-elected. He defeats his own case with that argument, because the charities did not have an issue that was valid.
The public understood that the member opposite had a valid complaint about these charities, that he was justified in questioning the way they spent their money, that he was justified in challenging their books and asking them to show the validity of their operations. The public understood that and that is why he won.
It had nothing to do with how much money was spent by the third party. That is why the government has had every one of its gag laws struck down as unconstitutional. It has not been able to prove any connection between the amount of money spent and the outcome. The expert witnesses it has had in court have never been able to cite a single study that shows any correlation between the money spent and the outcome.
That is why when the supreme court delivers its decision on the latest challenge of the National Citizens' Coalition to this elections act I am certain it will again strike it down. Four attempts have been made by governments in the last 10 years to institute these gag laws. They are unconstitutional. They are undemocratic. They cannot be supported. The member defeated his own argument when he stood here 10 minutes ago.