Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure for me to stand and put our thoughts on this important legislation.
Before I begin, I would like to say, through you, Mr. Speaker, to the government House Leader, that the question I asked about 40 minutes ago in this Chamber dealing with the Canada Elections Act, he will note, if he looks at the transcript, had absolutely nothing to do with any technical briefing that was given earlier this day. It was all a matter of public record. Frankly, the answer was not warranted under the circumstances.
With regard to the legislation, it seems to me that the government is endeavouring to have three objectives. First, it says that we need greater transparency and enhanced disclosure. The New Democratic Party agrees with that.
Second, the government wants to promote fairness. Obviously all of us should be in agreement with that.
Third, and finally, the government wants to address the perception of big money having an undue influence in the political process. I will come back to that in just a moment.
This issue has been important for our party and for a number of voters in Canada for many years. As recently as this weekend at our leadership convention, yet another resolution was passed on the matter of donations to political parties. We said that it should be restricted only to individuals. We said that there should be third party limits in place, that public financing needs to be a part of the whole package, including an annual grant, which we note is in the legislation, and that adequate public financing needs to be in place before we can go ahead.
I think Canadians are genuinely concerned when they look at the disclosures on donations, for example, for the member for LaSalle—Émard, and they find that $10,000 have been contributed to that leadership campaign by something called the ABC Group, that 398536 Alberta Ltd. has contributed thousands of dollars, or that 90808353 Quebec Inc. has contributed money. We do not know and the Canadian public does not know.
Therefore it is accurate and proper that the government is moving forward with legislation that would prohibit this kind activity, this kind of funding to political parties and to leadership candidates or nominees for a riding association or for a nomination.
We want to look at the bill in detail. We agree with it in principle but we want to make sure that the funding is fairly allocated. We do support tightening the regulation of third party activities. I have not seen anything in here. The minister--