Mr. Speaker, the hon. member has obviously been talking to the people at Revenue Canada who do my taxes every year, because they always challenge the fact that I claim that I donated $1,200 to the Conservative Party and $1,200 to the Lanark—Frontenac—Lennox and Addington association. I had to dig up my figures and send them in a couple of years ago. It challenged my contribution to the Scott Reid campaign. I could not find the receipt for it, but I pointed out that I am Scott Reid and the Elections Canada website shows that somebody at my address with my name donates to the Scott Reid campaign, so either I really did donate or I hacked into the Elections Canada website and changed the information there, in which case it would want to charge me with something more serious.
With regard to the $1,500, as I understand it, that is just keeping up with inflation. I should point out, though, that one of the first acts of the Conservative government was to lower the donation rate from $5,000 to what at the time was $1,000 per person. It has since crept up due to inflation. Only real human beings could make donations, not corporations or unions. That was a big change. That was down from $5,000, which was where the Chrétien government had put it. I thought the Chrétien government did a good thing.
Before that, if we go back and look at the situation a decade ago or a decade and a half ago, there were quarter million dollar donations from corporations. A large part of what was being done was chasing these donations, having giant fundraising dinners and so on. It really was an inferior way of organizing things. Nothing happening now bears any resemblance to that world, nor does the money donated now have any resemblance to the, frankly, corrupting influence money had back at that time.