Mr. Speaker, my colleague also sits on the special legislative committee on the federal accountability bill and I have noticed his interest. I have even noticed some sympathetic treatment toward some of the issues that we have raised that we would like to see as amendments to the bill. The NDP has put forward some 20 amendments, most of them not too onerous, most of them minor in nature. I do appreciate the reception most of them have received from not just government members on the committee, but from other members as well.
The public appointments commission is one issue that is particularly interesting to us and one we are committed to, and we would appreciate the government's support on that when the time comes up.
As my colleague has said, this is the last day that a motion can be moved to extend the hours. I would put it to the House that we are also running out of time to introduce meaningful amendments to the Canada Elections Act so that we can stop what I see as the wide scale, wholesale abuse of the Canada Elections Act in the context of the Liberal leadership race as we are seeing it today.
We began by exposing through the media the fact that some people think it is appropriate to launder money through their children's bank accounts in order to exceed the donation limits of the Canada Elections Act. I do not care how this is portrayed or how it is painted and I do not care if somebody gets sued for it, but that is fraud. That is a deliberate attempt to circumvent the donation rules of the act. That was exposed by the hard work of journalists who drew attention to it and by the hard work of members of this House of Commons.
I think everyone is now aware that we do not want undue corporate influence in our elections. We do not want union money influencing or having a disproportionate influence in elections. It should only be a voter, or at least a landed immigrant or a permanent resident of Canada who should be participating in the election process, and even then, with pretty strict guidelines and pretty strict limits.
My colleague, the parliamentary secretary, said that today was the deadline for extending the hours. We should have unanimous consent to do just that so we can introduce these important amendments before it is too late, before we lose the confidence of Canadians and before we lose this window of opportunity to restore integrity to the democratic system here in Canada.