Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join in the debate on this particular legislation. I will join with my colleague in asking the government to resume a principled position of respecting the will of Parliament, the will of committees, and maintain the substance of the amendments that were put forward by the committee during the course of its deliberations. These, of course, were very well thought out. They received input from Canadians from all over, from all walks of life, but expert opinion as well.
I think it is very important that when we look at new drafts of the Canada Elections Act, we look at all the issues. One of things that I think is missing here is that there are obviously other issues as well that the government has not brought forward for consideration.
For example, just not too long ago, there was an issue where the governing party, the Conservative Party of Canada, was involved in a dispute with Elections Canada over the inclusion or the non-inclusion of convention fees as they relate to a political contribution which is tax receiptable. The dispute went on. There was much dissatisfaction expressed by the government toward Elections Canada on its point of view.
However, I believe, at the end of the day, there was some reconciliation that the Conservative Party of Canada had the matter wrong and Elections Canada had the matter right. We do not really know exactly what the Conservatives did about that, it has not been widely reported, but we understand that they have accepted that because they have offered no amendments or revisions to the Elections Act to provide any further clarity toward their point of view.
The second issue, of course, is related to the supposed in and out scandal. In my own constituency, the Conservative candidate in the last election was named by Elections Canada as participating in that. I understand, and I fully believe, he probably did so completely unwittingly. His official agent was given specific information from the party offices, the headquarters, related to the nature of the transfer.
Probably questions should have been asked, but they were not. But, of course, within the Elections Canada Act, if there is a dispute about that, the governing party has offered no amendments to put forward its point of view on that. That I think is very relevant.
In my own constituency of Humber—St. Barbe—Baie Verte, about a year and a half ago, the entire Conservative riding association resigned en masse, I was told this by a former executive of the riding association, over a dispute about the Atlantic accord. It took this position principally on principle, but it did so because it was very dissatisfied with the nature of the political process. It was given a promise and a commitment that it would indeed be honoured. The government's position at the time was that--