Mr. Speaker, it boils down to the weakness of the Conservatives' arguments. That is the typical reaction of someone who has no good arguments, someone who is not on solid ground. My training as a lawyer and my experience in court have taught me that. When the lawyers opposite me knew they did not have a case, they found ways of fiddling with the truth by attempting to interpret the rules of law to suit his case. Fortunately, the situation was remedied when the judges handed down their verdicts.
This is the approach used by those who have a guilty conscience. Instead, the Conservatives should face reality and admit that they used the in and out scheme to the tune of $1.2 million in the 2006 election campaign and exceeded the $18 million spending limit.
We have a series of e-mails in which the ad-buying agency, on the verge of exceeding the $18 million limit, wondered what to do. At that point, the Conservatives dreamed up the strategy of invoicing the ridings for $1.2 million for local advertising when, in fact, the content was the same as that in national advertising and there was nothing local about it.