Madam Speaker, I found the comments and proposals by my colleague from Laurentides—Labelle to be a good deal more interesting than those in the bill we are discussing. We sit on the procedure and House affairs committee together. I am not sure I want to admit this, but I am the longest-serving member of that committee. My service there goes back 15 years. People voting in the election were still in short pants when I got on the committee, one of whom, I think was the member. His youthfulness is matched by his intelligence and enthusiasm. I will make this observation.
I have had a number of unconventional positions throughout my career as a member of Parliament and I made an effort to put them on paper and get them published the quasi-academic journals that circulate around this place, Policy Options, for example. I suggest that the ideas the hon. member suggested in the first half of his remarks would have a suitable home in a publication like that and then could become part of the ongoing debate over something which, quite frankly, will never be an issue that is resolved. It will always be an issue that is subject to further refinement. That is the nature of our political system, it is the nature of our rules in the House of Commons, and it also is the nature of our laws applying to elections and, in particular, fundraising.
I want to talk a bit about the bill itself. That is, after all, why we are assembled here today. This bill is, in a sense, a set of proposed solutions in search of a problem, and I will explain what I mean.
In general, the political financing structure we have now is better than it has ever been before. As one consequence of my Methuselah-like longevity in this place, I am able to look back to a distant time, a land that time forgot, as it were, when dinosaurs ruled the earth or, at any rate, ruled fundraising. When I was first elected, there were no fundraising limits at all.