Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Ottawa Centre raises another very valuable point. Again I thank him for the dedication he has shown in trying to bring an element of reason to this debate.
There is one other thing that we should be addressing today in terms of election law: the rules that allow people to launder money through their children's bank accounts in order to circumvent the donation limits of the Elections Act. That would be time well spent if we could have some of that cleaned up before we go into the next election campaign, because it made most Canadians feel a little bit ill when they saw eleven year olds donating $5,400 each to a leadership race in the last Liberal leadership campaign.
However, when we tried to change that law in Bill C-2, the Conservatives, the Liberals and the Bloc voted against the NDP's efforts to try to make it illegal to shake down kids for their lunch money to run an election campaign. I thought that was appalling. I thought that this would have been an opportunity, because once the Elections Act is opened, every clause can be reviewed, but we have seen fit to allow another election to go by where the donation limits can be circumvented by laundering money through our children, grandmother, neighbour and God knows who.
I think these loans are criminal, but legal, which may be a contradiction. They are certainly criminal to anyone with the sensibilities of most Canadians. As for this idea that we can launder money by funnelling it through our children's bank accounts to circumvent the rules, it should be illegal.