Mr. Speaker, I always find it entertaining listening to my friend, the member for Spadina—Fort York. I will have to say his understanding of political financing in this country is about as good as his understanding of political philosophy. He would do well to actually listen to what I said earlier. Of course, I never, at any point in my speech, advocated the abolition of rules or said that there is not a place for moral rules alongside a broader framework of virtue ethics. It is interesting that he always refers to Ayn Rand. Maybe he is more familiar with those texts than I am. However, Ayn Rand was not an advocate of virtue ethics. I think he should know that. If he does not, maybe he should focus his questions in a different direction.
He said a lot about things that happened in the Toronto port authority, apparently. He repeatedly asserted the word “apparently“, “Apparently, you just had to pay this money and you got on the port authority”. I do not really think a lot of the assertions of that member are necessarily worth dignifying with a response. I would rather we talk, not about his constructed vision of “apparently”, but rather about what we know happened.
I spoke in my speech about what we know happened under the Conservative government. We had one fundraiser where it was $50 a person. It was done by mistake, without the minister's prior knowledge, all of the money was refunded, and there was proactive engagement with the Ethics Commissioner.
With the present government, we have repeated $1,500 cash for access fundraisers. There has been no recognition of how inappropriate that is, no apology, and no pullback from that. The government is proudly standing up to defend it and is now trying to enshrine cash for access in the legislation. That is not an “apparently”. That is something we know happened. Those are events that are on the record, The government, frankly, should be ashamed of them and it should be reversing course, not trying to justify them.