Madam Speaker, I commend my colleague for his speech and for his flight of oratory. However, I wonder if he agrees with me that, these days, the NDP has taken a position vis-à-vis the Liberal Party that we could describe as “prostitution”? Is there a secret reason they do not want to reveal?
The NDP is usually funded by the unions of English Canada and also receives an overall cheque of $5 million, $10 million or $20 million. I do not know the exact amount. Now, with a new act on public funding, it will only receive $1,000 from the unions. Thus, it will have to campaign with empty pockets.
Moreover, NDP members are not used to going to see the people, meeting with the people, the way we do to get public funding. For example, from January 20 to April 1, I ran a fundraising campaign in my riding and I collected $36,000 with an average donation of $17. That is going to the people and getting funding from them.
The NDP is funded almost entirely by corporations, like the Liberal Party. It does not have any public funding and has trouble going into an election campaign. That argument by my colleague was not raised earlier.
Since my time has expired, I will get back to this in a speech later on.