Mr. Speaker, I certainly do agree with my colleague from Yorkton--Melville. He is exactly right, particularly in his argument about the fact that money is an inseparable element of political power in this country and, frankly, in all democracies. I remember the 1996 presidential campaign when Senator Phil Gramm from Texas was running for the nomination. He was asked about polling data in regard to whether or not he had a chance of winning the nomination to become the Republican nominee to challenge Bill Clinton at that time. He said that he did not know about the polls but he had the most important thing in politics and that was “ready money”.
Money is absolutely important. Because we are dealing with public contracts and the facts that the Prime Minister may very well no longer be considering campaigning in the next federal election campaign and we have a number of senior cabinet ministers who have run for leadership in the past and have access to public money, it is very important. Not only is it important to stop any explicit misuse of money, which may or may not be happening, but also to prevent the appearance of that happening so that we can make a collective effort to reduce from 70% down to as few as absolutely possible the number of Canadians who believe that our political system is corrupt.
We have that responsibility, the government has that power, and the motion simply asks it to act on that.