Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Red Deer—Lacombe gave an astonishingly cogent speech. It laid out this issue in clear and uncertain terms.
What bothers me about what we see from the government side and the cash for access antics is this. What kind of corrosive effect does it have on the decision-making process in government, and in turn on the trust that people have in government? Not everyone is an elitist who can attend cash for access fundraisers.
Regular citizens deal with their government all the time. Small business people get licences, small companies go through environmental assessment processes, and so on. They expect the decisions to be fair, open and honest. What we now see is a slippery slope toward, and I use this word deliberately, corruption. In many of the dysfunctional countries around the world, especially in some of the poorer parts of the world, people are poor because of corruption, and for no other reason than corruption.
Could my hon. friend comment on the slippery slope we may be on now?