Would you please allow me to speak and then you can stand up and ask me a question. I listened to you people very politely and I ask for the same courtesy.
The point made by the Alliance was that the Government of Canada should not give any money to political parties because, in doing so, we would include the Bloc Quebecois and the Bloc Quebecois has a different agenda from us.
If we start to discriminate on the basis of the ideology of a particular party, where do we start and where do we stop? Tomorrow there could be a Communist party here and then the Canadian Alliance would say that it does not want to finance communist parties. Who are we to decide what people want?
If the people of Quebec, in their given democratic rights, agree to vote for Bloc Quebecois members, I might disagree fundamentally with the ideology that the Bloc Quebecois proposes, but at the same time I respect the democratic right of all Canadians to finance and back any political party legally constituted, of their choice, regardless of what it is. And to say, whether it is the Canadian Alliance or another,“holier than thou, I am pure, you are impure so I do not give to you”, is fundamentally wrong and undemocratic.
I guess I have hit a nerve on that side because I hear them shouting. They will not agree because they want to be selective. They are holy and the others are less holy. Who decides this in a society that is open, transparent and democratic?
I am glad that this proposed law will constitute registries for electoral districts or ridings so that associations will be accountable to the system and that is also democratic, transparent, open and right.
I am also glad that nominations involving candidates for eventual election will fall under the aegis of the law so that it will give people who do not have the means to spend unlimited funds, as has sometimes been the case, a chance to access the nomination process. This would include women who do not have a chance to perhaps go to work.