Mr. Speaker, I want to clarify a misconception on the part of the NDP about compliance audits. In his report, the Chief Electoral Officer laid out two options for compliance audits. One was that his office would do all of the compliance audits to make sure that all registered federal political parties followed all of the election rules. The second was that the political parties would contract compliance audits. In other words, the political parties would bear the cost associated with compliance audits. We thought that was a reasonable suggestion. Why should the taxpayer foot the bill for something that political parties were required to do? Federal parties are required to play by the rules. Why should they not be required to pay for audits?
To put it succinctly, we believe the political parties should bear the costs associated with compliance audits rather than the taxpayer. That is the difference between our two parties.