Mr. Speaker, I will say for my colleague from New Westminster—Coquitlam that there are some major protections in the bill. Again, as I said in my speech, I am not sure that it covers all the bases, but the major protections are there to avoid what we saw in the Liberal leadership campaign.
I think we would have seen it if we had ever received any adequate and accountable reporting from the current Prime Minister in regard to his leadership run. We will be doing away with the ability of individual candidates to borrow from individuals. Basically we are focusing in on only financial institutions being able to lend money to candidates.
Why this is important is that, again, it takes away the ability of the wealthy private sector to come in and buy a leadership or a nomination. We have a cap on what candidates can spend. Then we make sure that they do not get around the cap by taking out loans they never repay.
One of the inadequacies of the current law on the books now is that Elections Canada in effect can extend the time to repay the loans. The loans are supposed to be repaid 18 months after the fact. Elections Canada can extend that time.
Quite frankly, I am concerned that the criteria for Elections Canada to make decisions on whether it is going to allow the loans to be extended for repayment purposes are not as clear or perhaps as tight as they should be. It is one of the areas where at some point we may need to have some additional reform.