Mr. Speaker, the remarks of my colleague from the Liberal Party in Quebec have reminded me of an analogy I heard that the 1997 and 2000 elections were not unlike the Olympics, where one team would be all doped up on steroids and the other team had to live by the rules and was at a severe disadvantage.
Where I come from the official agent tells a candidate if he or she has spent one dollar more than the spending limits. If the candidate wins, he or she loses the seat and is not allowed to run again; the official agent is led away in handcuffs and everybody associated with the campaign is guilty of election fraud. Many, many ridings in Quebec were in that very situation. They were getting illegal money during the course of the 1997 and 2000 campaigns.
Would the member join me in calling for the Chief Electoral Officer to revisit every one of those ridings and disallow them, make them null and void in the context of the illegal spending that went on?