Madam Speaker, that is a great question. I appreciate the friendly question from the member from Kingston because there is a very important difference and it really does change the nature of it.
Speakers have always had to run under party banners. Until the day comes when parties have a convention or agreement that we will not run candidates against the Speaker, the Speaker has to go into an election and has to have signs and pamphlets and organize volunteer meetings. There has never been an expectation that a Speaker would cease partisan activities in that nature for their own re-election. Previous Speakers have done that for decades. In fact, the previous Speaker, the member for Nipissing—Timiskaming, made a government announcement in his riding for government funding. Nobody objected to that because it was clear that he was communicating to his own constituents. He was talking about the work that he does as a member of Parliament and informing his constituents as to a government decision in his riding. We were aware that the former Speaker had made that announcement, but that did not offend members of Parliament because it was in his own riding. The same is true for partisan fundraising activity.
The Speaker going to another riding's EDA and raising money for a political party is an offence to the other parties who will one day run candidates in that riding.