Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his question. I have not toured all the ridings in the region and in Quebec, but Mr. Caldwell was clear. It would seem—and I have no reason to doubt him—that the directive was that money would be sent for local expenses. What candidate could refuse substantial help from the party? Nonetheless, he realized this was not the case, that it was not for local expenses, but for national expenses. The Conservatives could not assign those expenses nationally because they had reached and exceeded the spending limit.
Mr. Caldwell says that is when he filed his report. In the end he paid back the money. If it was not for local expenses then it was for national expenses in a context where it was impossible to accept because that was not allowed. The Conservative Party did indirectly what it could not do directly. It went through the back door.
If the auditors had not paid particular attention to this matter, we would never have known. This insults the Conservatives to no end. They are not in control. They call it a matter of interpretation. They are going to battle against the Chief Electoral Officer because they think there was a misinterpretation.
In light of the few little invoices I referred to earlier, this makes sense. Obviously those invoices correspond to money that was spent. They do not correspond to local advertising expenses. They do not correspond to the allocation per constituent. I have said it before and I will say it again, this may be a hobby horse but in my view, it is one person, one elector, one vote, one expense. Nonetheless, in some regions, the Conservatives tried to multiply the expenses by two for the national level because they were unable to cut the expenses they had incurred. The expenses had been incurred well in advance and once they are incurred there needs to be a scheme to get out of that situation in order to save face. Were they aware of what would happen? I believe that someone somewhere knew. They tried this scheme and then it was made public.
Again, I am reaffirming my confidence in the Chief Electoral Officer.