We did not see any of that, Mr. Speaker, and yet the good, hard-working volunteers were struggling. Money was put into the riding but then quickly pulled out. Forty per cent of that riding's budget was used to buy ads elsewhere.
Any average Canadian is going to look at that and wonder what is going on. They are going to ask how a claim can be made that this is a perfectly normal practice? It is not a perfectly normal practice. A perfectly normal practice is when a federal party looks at a riding and considers buying some ads because it feels it might have a chance of winning that riding. Those ads are clearly marked for use in a local campaign. Whether the money is transferred to the local party or whether it is held by the national party is very clear.
What we are dealing with here is something different. We are dealing basically with what amounts to laundering money by sending it to ridings then pulling it back and paying for national advertising. That is the background.
The real issue here is the response when the government party was caught. It tried to hit up taxpayers for rebates that Elections Canada said it was not entitled to receive.
The Conservatives could have looked at this as though they were corporate lawyers and said that because it was a grey area they thought they found a loophole and could get away with it. A Mack truck could be driven through that loophole. The Conservatives were caught. They could have said they learned their lesson.
That was not their response, however. They responded by attacking Elections Canada with a series of insinuations as though Elections Canada was somehow a partisan wing of the Liberal Party, that somehow it was involved in a nefarious attack.
This has really become an open-ended attack on an institution of parliamentary democracy in this country. If the Conservatives are telling citizens at home that they cannot trust the election process in Canada, it is very much a scorched earth policy. That desperate party is trying to mislead the Canadian public about how it circumvented the very clear rules. The Conservatives knew they were circumventing the rules.
Now we are in a situation where the Conservatives have turned their attack on an institution that ensures the validity of elections in Canada. This institution is used internationally. It has set a standard.
The Conservatives have now hunkered down in their war room. A few of their spin doctors are basically trying to run the country. Anyone who asks questions will immediately be attacked. They have launched one lawsuit after another if anyone questions them. Those members have turned the government House committee into a total zoo. I sit on that committee and I find the actions of Conservative members absolutely embarrassing. They have been elected to this place and they are expected to show up and do a job for the people of Canada, and yet they are standing on their heads in an attempt to interfere with that job.
We have seen attempts to stop any investigation time after time. When Elections Canada finally had to bring in the RCMP, the attack was turned on that institution.
We simply cannot have that. We need confidence in our public institutions. We need confidence in parties playing by the rules, whether they like to or not. We as a Parliament are duty bound to declare our recognition of the work Elections Canada does. We are duty bound to say that these partisan attacks simply have to stop.