Mr. Speaker, what we need to keep focused on here is that the Conservative Party had reached its national spending limit and it was trying to find a way to exceed that spending limit. It was looking at campaigns where it had very little chance of winning but had high ceilings. What is really going to be pertinent to this discussion at the end of the day is to find out where that money was spent. If the money that was put into northern Ontario ridings where we saw almost no advertising, if they had to pay for ads in other regions, then clearly the Conservative case is going to be nailed shut in terms of how far it went over the line.
Again, we have to get back to the simple question of public trust. As I said at the beginning of my speech, when I first ran for election, my campaign manager told me that if I was not sure, then do not do it. The Conservative Party was really sure what it was doing. It was looking for a way to get $1.2 million in national advertising that it was not entitled to and once caught, rather than own up, the Conservatives were defiant and belligerent and they were still trying to ding the taxpayer for almost $700,000 in rebates to which they were not entitled.
Average Canadians play by the rules, but why is it that people in the Conservative Party of Canada think those rules are there to be broken and twisted around and at the end of the day they should also be entitled to money they are not entitled to?