Madam Speaker, to the member's first point, I would say that my point was not that people who give the maximum get a proportionately larger benefit but that there is something perverse about people giving the maximum to get in to a special meeting with a minister, perhaps in an area in which they have a particular business interest, and the rest of us Canadians are giving them half that money back. It is approximately half, because it is 75% on the first $400, 50% on the next $300, and 33%, I think, on the next $250. It works out to about a $666 rebate on $1,500, which is approximately half of $1,500.
I am going to give myself that one.
I stand by my main point, which is that there is something perverse about that.
On the second question, about the nature of the per-vote subsidy, we can all agree that it is hard to engineer a perfect system. The public subsidy is already being paid, as there is already a total amount that is paid in terms of public subsidies to political parties. Right now it is a system that rewards parties that have donors who have more money to give. They can make those decisions to donate, and money comes back to them, which is a factor in how much they can donate. If people donate $20, because that is all they have, it does not really matter what the rebate is. It is a question of cash on hand, not how much is coming back at the end of the tax year. Therefore, my point is that a per-vote subsidy I think goes a long way to try to reduce that inequity in the current public subsidy system.