Madam Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to enter the debate. Let me first of all say that the reason why we are supportive of this is because there is a problem. We see the problem and I am not going to make this any more partisan than it sounds, that is not my intent, but merely the reality.
The leadership race that the Liberal Party had left huge debts. It would seem that some of those debts are not going to be paid off. If that is the result and a candidate was backed by individuals, effectively right now those individuals bankrolled a big part of the candidate's campaign and by virtue of just never paying it off, put that money forward, and did exactly what we are trying to avoid which is single individuals, single corporations, and single unions from providing tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of dollars to one candidate.
I agree with the minister in acknowledging that there is a problem. We accept that the minister is going in the right direction. That is why again, as always, we say we need to see the details at committee. We do have some concerns. It has been raised once and it will be raised again by both opposition parties. The minister is saying that there is no need to put any regime around banks or credit unions in terms of who they will loan to and who they will not. That could create a serious problem. If we are only allowing the money to come from one or two places, and those places are not democratized in terms of what the rules are, in terms of who they will lend money to, one does not have to be a political scientist to see the problem.
I would hope there would be some room and latitude to talk at committee about what kind of regime might be in place, what kind of safeguards could be in place, and maybe there is a backup by the government, maybe there is a role there. But any possibility where we are narrowing how Canadian citizens can raise money to participate in our electoral process, we need to ensure that not only is it fair but that we can actually access the money regardless of our political platform.
For the most part the platforms here are not scary. Some might argue the point from our different perspectives. But in a world view, I think members know what I am saying when I use that phrase.
If there is a legitimate, legal party that might have policies that scare certain segments of the population and part of that segment of the population could be the banks. It does not take a whole lot of analysis to realize that if a bank can find a way to legally, legitimately and free from harm say “no”, it is probably in the bank's interest to ensure that a party that has a platform that would hurt the bank would be helped by that bank to get more votes, and ultimately become the government that is then going to bring in rules and a regime that the bank thinks is not in its interest.