Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to speak to Bill C-24, recently introduced in this House and dealing with political party financing in particular.
From the outset, I must recognize that we, in the Bloc Quebecois, agree with the bill in principle. I will elaborate on this in my remarks, even if I have only 10 minutes. Ten minutes may seem like a long time to some, but it is a very short time for others.
I want to point out that the purpose of the bill is to clean up our political system. The idea is to do things the way they are done elsewhere. Naturally, Quebec was mentioned. In Quebec, legislation was passed 26 years ago. If memory serves, it was passed in 1977. But we must look at what was going on before then to understand that the purpose of the bill is truly to clean up politics. This bill has a number of flaws, and I will come back to that. Still, it is unfortunate that such a bill was so long in coming at the federal level.