Mr. Speaker, I am not really sure whether my hon. colleague from the Conservative Party really recognizes the gravity of the situation.
We are dealing with accusations that the Conservative Party sat down to find a way to circumvent the spending limits. If this party were as open and transparent as it is now claiming to be, post-RCMP raids, we would not have had the monkey show here in Parliament that went on for months. The Conservatives were threatening members of Parliament who asked questions. They were shutting down the committees or they were basically running out the back door rather than address the simple question.
The Conservatives are expecting us to believe that they were forthcoming when they went immediately on the attack against Elections Canada, trying to basically trash reputations of independent representatives in this country.
The question was brought to the attention of the RCMP and a judge issued a warrant. There were certainly serious issues about why the Conservative Party members were emailing their local ridings, who were desperate for any kind of money and being told, “If we are going to send you money, we want to ensure that money is coming back the next day. We want access to your bank account so we can get the money back as quickly as we can”.
There are serious questions and I do not know if the member is actually recognizing how much of an impact this has had on public trust. That is why we, as politicians, in representing the hard-working honest politicians in the House in the various parties, have to restore public confidence.
We are not just here on some kind of elaborate shell game. We are not here as a money laundering scheme. We are here to ensure that elections are done in a fair and open manner, and if the Conservative Party had been open from the beginning, it probably would not have been in this trouble in the first place.