Derek Lee

[Afghanistan, March 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the losses incurred by people through military violence, insurgency or terrorism are never ever recoverable. They are gone. Sometimes people will regard them as investments in a cause but those losses are losses and we grieve them dearly.

However, in terms of building the future, we would never have rebuilt Europe and the Americans would never have rebuilt their country after the Civil War if they could not deal with the people they fought with. That is true of every conflict around the world. I have a sense that will happen some way, somehow in Afghanistan if we can allow them in Afghanistan that opportunity by providing enough security to allow them to start building.

[Afghanistan, March 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I would have to agree with the member that we will not achieve a strategic objective using military force, strategic objective meaning a pacification and development of civil governance in Afghanistan through the application of military force. It has never happened in history. Military force does not achieve strategic ends. The one exception may be the nuclear bomb, which we have not used for 65 years or so. We are not sure whether it works strategically.

If we are to succeed strategically in Afghanistan, it is only within a tactical envelope provided by military security that the Afghanistan people will be able to develop their system of civil governance. If civil governance means including some Taliban presence, then talking, voting and negotiating, all of that is possible for the Afghan citizens. They will make those decisions themselves.

I tend to agree with the hon. member that negotiating, voting or whatever with the Taliban is never out of the question.

[Afghanistan, March 10th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, this is for me a very special occasion to participate in this important debate on Canada's mission in Afghanistan. Not since the former Yugoslavia and Korea has our flag been placed in a zone of conflict where, by terms of engagement, there has been a full application of military force by Canadians.

We want to remember why we are in Afghanistan. There did exist and perhaps still exists an international terrorist conspiracy based there, which was aided and abetted by the government in Afghanistan. Out of that conspiracy came an attack on New York and Washington. There have been other attacks in other locations around the world as well.

In the New York attack, approximately 3,000 people died, some of whom were Canadian. The United Nations could not allow Afghanistan impunity by allowing this group to act and it was necessary to act, in the view of this House, Canada and the United Nations, to uproot the terrorists and bring them to account. That is why the United Nations, NATO and our American cousins are active militarily in Afghanistan at this time.

As a member of Parliament, I had the privilege of being embedded with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan a couple of years ago. It was certainly a memorable experience. I was proud to be there with a very impressive group of Canadian armed forces personnel. At the time, they were based in Camp Julian in Kabul. I was there the night that the first convoy moved to Kandahar. It was troubling.

Mr. Speaker, I should say that I will be splitting my time with the member for Welland.

One night, and I will not say what time it was because we are not supposed to say what time things happen, but at some point in the middle of the night the engines started up and it woke up the whole camp. Some in the camp were aware that the convoy was moving out. There was a sense then, as there still is today, that the mission, in moving from Camp Julian in Kabul to Kandahar was to be a very serious commitment with very serious risks. I recall at the time being concerned about the possibility of an ambush on that particular convoy as it made its way for the first time down what I think is called Highway 1 from Kabul to Kandahar.

During that time with the forces, which I was very proud to experience with two other parliamentarians, I bounced around in an Iltis and on the back of a LAV-3, a light armoured vehicle, as a flying sentry. We moved around Kabul and in the rural areas of the region. I was proud to be with the Canadian Forces as I eyeballed the people and places and breathed the dust of Afghanistan in trying to understand all that is there. It is a complex piece, indeed.

I certainly found, as have some who have gone there, that at times one can be optimistic and at other times pessimistic about prospects for the future. I recall when the president of Afghanistan was here, I was particularly optimistic when I listened to his speech. When I was there, the obstacles to progress, economic development and peace seemed huge, but with the presence of the international community, occasionally one sees a glimmer of hope.

There are two things I took away from that particular stint in Afghanistan. First, the Afghan people themselves are resilient and industrious. There is no question about that. It gives reason for optimism. Everybody seemed to be working at something, at least the men. The women and the young girls were less visible, often in the home, but the men and the boys all seemed to be working at something. However menial the task, they were working. They are industrious. They will build their country. I came away with that very clear conclusion.

The second thought that I came away with was the high level of heroin production in the south of Afghanistan, which by itself, the hugeness of it, the scope of it, and the amount of money involved is so large that it will impair the evolution of good governance. It is essentially one big huge implantation of organized crime in the south of the country. It is a problem that Afghanistan and the Afghans will have to deal with. It will distort the evolution of the economy and the politics and the good governance of that country. It is not intractable, but it is a big problem.

I will move to some conclusions. Of course, if 9/11 had not occurred, we would not be in Afghanistan. Afghanistan would be evolving as Afghanistan always has in the will of the Afghanistan people. However, we are there, and it is probably true that we will not be there forever.

The resolution that we have crafted in the House appears to be a rough consensus. The international community may always have some presence in trying to assist Afghanistan now that we are there, but there appears to be a sense that there must be a rotation among our allies for this purpose.

The motion we have before us frames the next many months as a three year commitment. It is our hope that the Afghans will continue to construct a civil society infrastructure within an envelope of security and over time that responsibility for security and the full package will evolve to the Afghans, as it should be.

I want to pay tribute to our Canadian Forces in Afghanistan. I want to pay tribute to the people of Afghanistan. It seems that the people of Afghanistan have put up with soldiers, guys with guns, for decades and decades and decades. I only have to go back half a century or so to notice the Russians, their own civil war, the Taliban, and now NATO, also with guns.

I want to pay tribute to the Afghan police and the Afghan army as they evolve to take on this very large task of providing security for their civil governance. That is an ongoing task.

I pay tribute to our own Canadian Forces with NATO. Often not mentioned are our special forces, JTF2. I pay tribute to them tonight. They have been on the job there for quite a while. They are not mentioned because most of what special forces do is classified. Our provincial reconstruction teams are there, and I pay tribute to them.

Last, I say that there will be no military solution. The military application of force is tactical, intended to allow Afghans an opportunity to develop and to rebuild their system of governance.

We are not going to be armchair generals in this place. The motion that we may approve, and I hope we will approve, says that we are not armchair generals. We will give to our forces the orders. We will tell them what we want them to do and then we will let them do it, using appropriate military procedures as they see fit, but the term will come to an end.

In the hope that we will rotate and continue to contribute to the development of Afghanistan with our NATO allies, I hope that this resolution as negotiated on both sides of the House will be adopted.

[Points of Order, March 4th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I am very sorry that I do not. It is not something that appears to have happened a great deal. I must say I have not spent hours and hours of research, but I did take a look at the usual sources and did not find this.

It would seem to me to be pretty obvious. If we simply follow the wording in Marleau and Montpetit, which attempts to package all of the historic precedents, we follow here in the House a rule of law and a committee has to stay within its mandate.

In this particular case, should the committee embark without a mandate, it would be in keeping for a person invited or summoned to the committee to simply say, “I am sorry, I do not hear you, Mr. Committee Chair because you are operating outside your mandate. You are rogue. You are not following the rule of law. I might just as well respond to a television reporter than respond to a committee that is clearly operating outside its mandate”.

I will accept any reasonable linkage of the mandate to this particular study, and I am sure, Mr. Speaker, you would too. I am sorry that I just do not have a really useful bang-on precedent that would serve at this point.

[Points of Order, March 4th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, yesterday another colleague in the House rose on a point of order involving the mandate of a committee. I thought it might be helpful to the Chair if I provided a few more remarks which I felt yesterday were not fully addressed.

The question involves the operation of a committee and whether the committee is operating within its mandate and whether or not a committee when it drifts outside of its specific mandate should be communicated with by the House in some way.

I know, Mr. Speaker, you are reluctant and naturally so to interfere with the work of committees. They generally do a pretty good job of carrying on the work that is delegated to them by the House.

The first thing I want to mention of course is the very basics here, the rules of the House. Mr. Speaker, you will know very clearly that the work of the committees is set by orders of reference and Marleau and Montpetit fortunately speak to this fairly clearly. I am not too sure I have to read Marleau and Montpetit, but I will refer to the page numbers just for reference here in the discussion.

On page 853 it states: “The Standing Orders provide standing committees with permanent orders of reference--” and on page 854, the authors write: “Committees are bound by their orders of reference and may not undertake studies or make recommendations to the House which go beyond the limits established by them”.

In this case the particular committee is the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics. That particular committee has adopted a motion the contents of which were made available to the House yesterday which purports to, and I will just use the short form here, “investigate the fundraising practices of the Liberal Party”.

That motion of the committee which was adopted has been provided to the House and, Mr. Speaker, if you want me to read it I can, but I probably do not have to.

Mr. Speaker, you are indicating that I should read it. The motion that was adopted states:

That pursuant to Standing Order 108(1)(a) in relation to the conflicting reports about the fundraising practices of the Liberal Party, the committee investigate the fundraising practices of the Liberal Party of Canada, which - as evidenced by such recent events as, the February 13, 2008 Fundraising Auction at the Ottawa Congress Centre, the “Stéphane Dion’s Liberal Leaders Dinner” event of February 21, 2008, which accepted corporate money though the federal branch of the Liberal Party of Canada in Saskatchewan, the Halloween Spooktacular Carnival in Mississauga-Streetville of October 26th, 2007, which accepted corporate sponsors, and other prior events - potentially violate the Canada Elections Act by encouraging and allowing personal donations in excess of $1,100 dollars, as well as allowing and encouraging political donations from corporations, unions and associations.

Essentially, it is a Canada Elections Act fundraising focus. Mr. Speaker, you will be the judge of what that appears to be.

In adopting the motion, I am suggesting that the members have gone way beyond the mandate of the committee. The committee's mandate is contained in the Standing Orders. It does not have any specific other reference or guidance from the House in terms of its order of reference.

Mr. Speaker, if you read the order of reference from Standing Order 108(3)(h), you will find that there is really only one sub-category, 108(3)(h)(v) and (vi), which could in any way relate to what the committee is now purporting to do. I will just read subparagraph (vi):

the proposing, promoting, monitoring and assessing of initiatives which relate to access to information and privacy across all sectors of Canadian society and to ethical standards relating to public office holders;

I would accept that if the proposed work of the committee had to do with public office holders there might be a connection. But in fact, the term “public office holders” is defined by the Conflict of Interest Act. It is defined in the definition sections of that statute and does not have a particular section number. However, it is clear that the Liberal Party of Canada is not a public office holder. Public office holders are generally appointees of the government: ministers and parliamentary secretaries.

The focus of the committee's motion here is the Liberal Party of Canada. It is not a public office holder, so there is no reasonable reading of these rules that would allow the committee a mandate to do this type of inquiry.

I suggest that if the committee can clearly go beyond its mandate, then the committee can look at the fundraising efforts of the United Nations Children's Fund in Canada, the National Citizens' Coalition, charitable and political action groups across the country, and it might as well just go and study the Department of National Defence or the employment insurance fund. Once the committee goes beyond its mandate, it is simply beyond its mandate.

The point I want to try and make very clearly here is that the House should not allow its committees to do that. That would seem to be obvious. When a committee appears to be going beyond its mandate, I believe the House leadership should take steps to re-calibrate the committee's focus to ensure that the committee stays within its mandate.

I am suggesting that this committee is on the verge of going rogue. In this particular case, the committee overruled its own chair. The chair believed that this motion and this field of study was beyond the committee's mandate, and ruled it that way. The committee members overruled the chair. That is what I am told. I believe this is a very clear case.

Just as another benchmark, the procedure and House affairs committee, which does have a mandate to look at the Canada Elections Act and financing and fundraising of political parties, is currently doing a study on the issue of political party fundraising. So it is not as though the issue of political party fundraising is not covered in the Standing Orders. It is very clearly part of the mandate of the procedure and House affairs committee.

I am going to ask you, Mr. Speaker, to either make a ruling on this for the guidance of the House and the committee or, in collaboration with the House leaders or the members of the committee, effect some form of reconsideration of their decision to embark on this particular field of study simply for the purpose of following the rules of the House which are fairly flexible but clear, in this case.

I think your guidance to the committee would be very helpful in allowing the committee to get on and do the work it is supposed to be doing.

[Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, February 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-394, this private member's bill, is not a new initiative. It is a repeat of several previous initiatives of private members to put forward amendments to the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act that would change the definition of family class, expanding it to allow a greater number of people in the relative class to be viewed as family class.

Taken in isolation, it might be seen as somewhat benign and not complex. Certainly, as I will mention later, the proposal in concept has been received favourably in immigration quarters, among immigration groups and settlement groups. One can understand why they might see this as a positive change, but I will address some of those issues later in relation to immigration settlement.

We in the Liberal Party know that immigration is a critical and fundamental component of Canada's future growth and prosperity. Without a healthy immigration program, our country, our children's country, may fail to achieve many of the very promising objectives that we see out there in the future, both economically and sociologically.

We see that immigration has not just built the country to where it is now, but that it is actually fundamental in taking us from the present into the future as a strong and independent economy with the necessary skills and connection to the rest of the world. We are a trading nation and we see that immigration is a factor in how we will maintain and improve our trade relationships around the world.

The current immigration intake in Canada is approximately 300,000 persons per year. It is just slightly under that, but I will use the round number of 300,000.

Within that number, there are included what we call the economic class, which would be the skilled workers, investors and other persons in those categories, and there is the family class, where the criteria applied, aside from the normal criteria involving health and criminal record checks, simply involve the relationship between the Canadian who sponsors and the family member who has applied. That category of immigration has served us well and is continuing to do so. Then there is the refugee class, a small component of the 300,000, but in the vicinity of 15,000 to 25,000 persons each year.

With all of that coming together, we have a fairly decent immigration flow. The one point I would make in understanding this is that between the family class and the economic class, based on a policy decision, those numbers are split between 60% being economic class and 40% being family class. It used to be in the range of fifty-fifty, but a decision was taken at about the time of the adoption of the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, based on the advice of the standing committee and other stakeholders, that 60% of our non-refugee class intake be economic class people with skills and 40% be family class.

That has a big impact on how we operate the immigration system now. It has huge implications for the type of bill proposed in this case, which would purport to expand the family class.

We have had a lot of complaints in the House, going back many years, about the so-called immigration backlog. Everyone says that the processing times take too long, but if we look closely at the immigration system, we will see, not to our surprise, that in virtually every year, going back 25 years, we have succeeded in bringing into Canada numbers of people within our targets.

Those targets are selected every year by the government and by the department. Every year, we have successfully brought into Canada the exact number of people, give or take a few thousand, of persons that we projected we would bring in. In order to bring in those people, we have to process them, get them into Canada and get them settled here. There is a whole process involved in that and it is complex too.

Therefore, even though we have a so-called backlog of approximately 800,000 people, we are succeeding every year as a country in bringing in exactly the same number of people that we want to bring in, and that is approximately 300,000. If we have a backlog of 800,000 and we bring in about 300,000, that averages out to about two and a half to three years of inventory of applications. That is a given.

Thus, somebody who complains that there is a three year processing time for a particular immigrant is simply looking at the reality, because it takes us three years to move the 800,000 people through the system. There is no way to do it any more quickly. The officials abroad cannot process any more quickly than they do.

Our immigration receiving areas, including Toronto, where I proudly represent a riding, Vancouver, Montreal and other places where we receive large numbers of immigrants, are hardly capable of assimilating and settling numbers much larger than what is coming in now. These people must have places to live, jobs, opportunities and schools. There are large numbers coming in now, with approximately 1% of our population coming in every year, and this is a huge challenge for communities. We invest federal money in that process.

The point is that the complaints about processing times are in most cases completely unfounded and do not take into account the fact that the department successfully achieves its targets every year.

What the current bill would do is expand the definition of family class, but if we think about it, all the bill would do is expand that 40% family class component and push it out beyond where it is now. If we stick to the 40% rule for the family class, the backlog in the number of applications will just get bigger and suddenly we will have a six year or seven year backlog, which may impair our ability to prioritize the spousal component of family class.

We do process spouses within six to twelve months. If we promise to do that, but the rest of the family class is still sitting there in a queue and this current bill adds thousands and thousands of new family class applicants who are not in the spousal category, that family class queue is going to go out to five to ten years. I do not think members of the House would want to see that happen.

My time is quickly coming to an end. It is normal for immigration groups and settlement groups to want to support a bill like this, but we have to keep in mind that those people legitimately speak in favour of their clients and their members. They naturally have an interest in expanding the family immigration class.

However, we have to look at the bill in the overall picture. We have to look at the overall immigration system. At the present time, it simply is not doable. It is not achievable to simply change the definition and hope that all the rest of the system will work well. I regret that.

[Sri Lanka, February 29th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, Canada and the world community have taken note of new violence in Sri Lanka following the Sri Lankan government's decision to suspend the peace process.

In a recent community forum hosted in Scarborough on the continuing conflict in Sri Lanka, members of the Sri Lankan Canadian community expressed their desire that Canada consult with the community here in developing a Canadian policy position on this issue, which could offer more leadership in fostering a peaceful and equitable resolution to the conflict. Moving forward with such would require the invitation and cooperation of the government of Sri Lanka.

Many have concluded that a military solution to this conflict is not viable and the renewed civil war would entail losses of life and levels of violence and destruction unacceptable by modern standards. Canadians know that peoples of different language, culture, religion and race can live and prosper and share a country together, but must have the political will and leadership to do so.

I urge all parties to the conflict in Sri Lanka to renew and redouble their efforts at implementing reforms and avoiding violence in achieving a resolution with peaceful means.

[Criminal Code, February 27th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I sat with members from all parties on the justice committee and in a sense worked with the bill that the hon. member has moved here in the House. This is a bill whose time has come.

I want to address one thing in my remarks which I do not think has been mentioned here tonight and that is that the existence of a separate theft offence will now allow the development of a separate and more focused jurisprudence with respect to the offence of auto theft.

In other words, prosecutors, judges, insurance industry executives, and offenders will be able to observe a specific pattern of sentencing, of procedure, to charge and convict based on certain protocols or understandings in different provinces and different cities with respect to the concept of the second offence.

It is a healthy thing to allow communities to deal with the cause of crime and to try and impose some sense of deterrence, keeping in mind that deterrence for the most part, and I may be disagreeing with my colleague here to some degree, is not based on the seriousness of the penalty attached to the offence. Deterrence is actually more a function of the likelihood to be caught and charged, so that is a police enforcement issue.

I feel that this new section dealing specifically with auto theft would allow for improved mechanisms of enforcement and some of those have already been mentioned in debate here.

I congratulate the member and also indicate my support for the bill.

[Canada Elections Act, February 14th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, the member has focused correctly on two of the problems with the bill and the amendments.

The Conservative government seems to have made two incorrect assumptions. One is that the rest of the world should be financing their campaigns the way the Conservatives have done it. They either do it their way or the highway.

The second is banks are just like public utilities. The banks are there and even though Conservatives probably will not have to borrow money, to heck with the rest of us. We can go to a bank and get a loan.

However, there are problems in doing that. The whole object of all the election financing legislation was to ensure there were no huge special interests vying for or currying favour in the electoral process. It was also to ensure there was transparency throughout so we could accomplish those objectives. If there were a special interest participating in some extra special way, it would be visible.

Those objectives were accomplished by the earlier legislation. We may quibble with caps, maximum amounts, minimum amounts and things like that, but the original legislation accomplished those results.

The new legislation that deal with loans goes too far and makes to incorrect assumptions. I would have been very comfortable if the parties, and I know there were discussions among the parties, had opposed it. I will vote with my party of on this one. However, I see the problem. They have gone too far.

The good news is we might have gone so far that it will not survive in the case of some candidates. Perhaps a single mother in Rimouski needs a bank loan and suddenly realizes she cannot get it. Then some of her friends tell her to deal with it in court because the legislation is an obstacle to her carrying on a campaign and getting through it.

I am not saying the bank has to pay for the whole campaign. The bank is just a bridge loan. The loan helps candidates get through the campaign period and then they pay the it back with their electoral contributions and their fund raising. That is my view.

[Canada Elections Act, February 14th, 2008]

Mr. Speaker, I will continue the debate on the report stage amendments to Bill C-29.

The government has said that the bill would fill in gaps in existing legislation governing loans to political candidates or parties. However, I point out that the existing law requires full disclosure of these types of loans and has procedures in place governing repayment. However, the bill purports to tweak and ratchet up the degree of regulation involved with these loans.

From a distance, it looks like the Conservative government is trying to do everything it can to lob grenades, regulate and obstruct the way people run for public office federally. I am imputing rationale here, but it is as though the Conservatives are saying they have their financing mechanisms all in place and the rest us can go find our own way. They are going to regulate the field and make it tough for everybody, including arguably, themselves. That is the universe the way they see it. They will continue to regulate and regulate. Every time they see something they do not like, they will pass another law and will continue to pass laws until the thing gets so gummed up that hardly anybody will be able to move on the street. That is my impression of the bill.

I accept it is a tweak, a ratchet up to the existing set of rules. However, I want to try to take a wider angle view of what is going on as it relates to the right of Canadians to participate in the political process.

I think there is some gamesmanship involved. I do not think it is all idealistic attempts to make the universe right. In their efforts at trying to kneecap the other parties, or other people who do not organize their campaigns the way the Conservatives do, are they really in a way obstructing participation in the process? Are we only thinking about existing parties when we make these new rules? Have we forgot about the new parties that have not made it into the system yet?

If we were talking about banking or the mining sector, we would be looking at such issues as obstacles and barriers to entry to ensure competition. We would not clutter the roadway with all kinds of rules and barriers to obstruct new entrants into the mining or banking field. We like to see competition. In adopting these measures in the bill, we would really be regulating. I will give two examples of how I think it may be a problem.

These new rules create barriers to people, although that may have been unintended. I think the intention is to create barriers for all the other political parties that are on the street now and we may have forgot about the ones that are not there yet.

I have two examples on which I want to focus.

First, the bill says that candidates and parties can only borrow from financial institutions. That would be a pretty significant law. In order to borrow from a financial institution, one has to have a credit rating. Does a poor candidate have a better credit rating than a rich candidate? I will leave that question unanswered, but I think the answer is kind of obvious. A poor candidate would not have as good a credit rating. Therefore, with the imposition of the mandatory financing mechanism with the banks and therefore the imputed need for a credit rating, are we imposing a barrier to poor candidates? I think we are. A poor candidate might be able to borrow from a brother-in-law, but might not be able to float a decent loan from the bank for his or her political campaign as he or she goes forward.

All of the existing incumbents in the House have been elected at least once. Most of us know how to finance a campaign or to raise money for it. We all have to do it. It is a very legitimate part of being involved in politics, but I think buried in this section is an adverse effect discrimination. Somebody out there will notice it and someday even the courts may notice it.

I am thinking of women who sometimes have less money and poorer people, who by definition have less money and resources, to participate in politics and sometimes may need a loan to get them over the hump.

Second, if we can only borrow from the banks and financial institutions, then the banks become an integral monopoly source of funding or borrowing for financial campaigns. I wonder how a bank makes a decision about its lending policies, about whether it will only lend to one party or one candidate. If it lends to one, does it have to lend to all? How will the banks handle this imposition of being the sole source for lending to political campaigns? If I were the banks, I would be kind of unhappy about it, because it is forcing banks to make decisions that may be seen to be political.

I mentioned earlier the problem of credit ratings for the poor candidates, the less pecunious candidates, but the banks also have a decision to make between political parties. They may decide to lend $10,000 to one party and $25,000 to the other party or cap everybody at $10,000. Maybe they will decide not lend anybody anything in a political campaign because it is too mucky and too political. They might leave it up to Parliament to figure out how it wants to finance campaigns, but they do not want people going to them. If we do not want candidates to borrow from the brother-in-law or from the friend, too bad.

The banks might not be too happy with this. I do not know for sure, but there may be some push-back there. If a person needs a loan and he or she has to go to a bank and the bank tells that person it does not lend to political candidates or parties, what have we done? We have created a barrier to participation and entry.

The amendments put forward by the government purport to roll back amendments that were put into the bill by the members of the committee. They were good amendments and I would like to keep them there. Therefore, I oppose the government's move to roll them back.

One amendment has to do with the amortization of loans of leadership candidates. Another one has to do with repeat loans during a calendar year, which looks pretty reasonable to me. The other has to do with the deletion of the automatic liability of a political party, as mentioned by the previous speaker, if one of its candidates defaults on repayment of a loan. That is just a dumb mechanism and it should not be there. However, it does relate to my earlier comments about banks and financial institutions. Maybe they would not mind having that automatic liability of the party being there, but I do not think it is a good way to manage the financing.

I therefore oppose the government motions to reinstate provisions of the bill.

For reasons I have stated, there may be some constitutional vulnerability related to the charter in these sections. We will not know until the appropriate case comes along. However, when that case does come along, I hope it is somebody who maybe did not have a lot of money, wanted to borrow money but was unable to do that. I hope the person can show that this relatively dumb, holier than thou government regulation of this part of the political process is seen to be an obstacle to political participation.

I hope my friends in the Conservative Party will see that perhaps they are taking too myopic a view of Canada. They are trying to regulate everything from their view inside their political party, but Canada is really much more diverse and demands a little more freedom than they are willing to accord in terms of the financing of campaigns and participation in the process.