Mr. Speaker, even that is being evinced in this debate, but I would like to bring back some rationality. I think all members of the House agree that we should be respecting taxpayers dollars and all members of the House ought to respect the fact that we have laws in the country that govern our electoral financing.
I want to come back again to what I think is a fair characterization of the issue, which is the federal Conservatives, in 2006, came up against their national election spending limit, which was $18 million, or thereabouts. When they came up against that, they transferred funds to local campaigns, which then transferred the money immediately back, effectively diverting an additional $1 million of national campaign ads over and above their national allowed ceiling.
The issue is whether the Conservatives broke the election laws by spending effectively $19 million on election ads. I am struck by the fact that those election ads, when we saw them on television, were not of a local nature. They were identical to the national advertising.
Could we have some comment from my hon. colleague on how they explain exceeding that—