Mr. Speaker, absolutely. At the end of the day, if the courts determine there was fraudulent activity, any money that was received under those circumstances needs to be paid back.
I am glad the member raised the point. Again, I am not a lawyer, but there are two main aspects. One is that this in and out scheme allowed the Conservatives to spend over $1 million more than the limit would allow. Remember that election finance control is one of the main foundations of our democracy.
The second aspect is that by the exercise of the money going in and out, technically it allowed the individual ridings that the money went into, albeit for less than an hour, to claim that amount of money that went out as an expense and to get the rebate. There is some question that some of the invoices that were used to justify that may be forged.
While the whole relationship between the funding of a national campaign and a local campaign may be inside baseball to a lot of Canadians, when it comes to the idea of falsifying and forging invoices to get money one is not entitled to, Canadians get that one.