Mr. Speaker, I was interested in the comments by my colleague from Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre. I concur with some of his points and I do see his point.
However, he mentioned the idea of election spending on days other than election day. Maybe he will have a chance to explain to us what his views would be on election spending outside of the writ period generally?
I will sum up my point by saying that we now have a fixed election date in this country. We now know when the next federal election will be, unless the minority government falls and it comes earlier, and there are strict spending limits for the writ period in and around that election, which is not likely to happen but it could happen that the government could fall sooner.
Is it not now time to introduce regulated spending limits for the entire four year period outside of the writ period? If it is unfair for big money to have undue influence during a writ period, which is why we have limits, is it not equally unfair for big money or whoever has the biggest bank account to have undue influence over political discourse for the entire four year period? Would he support spending limits in between elections?