Mike Sullivan

[Economic Action Plan 2014 Act, No. 1, April 3rd, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on the bill. It is just unfortunate that the bill is what it is. We have seen yet another giant omnibus budget bill arrive from the Conservative government, which really does nothing to correct the major flaws that the government has imposed upon Canada and Canadians since taking office.

As for the major flaws, I have just written a few of them. We have seen a reduction in many of the things that we think of as part of what Canada holds dear, the things we treasure as part of Canada. The Conservative government has systematically dismantled or reduced things like VIA Rail, Canada Post, the CBC, Veterans Affairs, EI, and Service Canada behind it. All of those things have lost something since the government took office.

In health care, there is a new reduction in the amount of money the provinces will get. The Canadian Wheat Board is gone. The gun registry is gone. Elections Canada is now having its powers taken back, and voting will be more difficult for many Canadians under the Conservative government, if not impossible.

The environment took a huge hit under the Conservative government with the first of these mammoth budget bills when the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act was eviscerated. That was two years ago, and the regulations for that act have still not been published, so we still do not know how an environmental assessment will deal with human health.

Rivers in this country have lost their protection. Almost all of them across the country—rivers, lakes, and streams—are no longer covered by environmental protection. We think that is because the government wants the pipeline companies to transport oil across them more easily.

Rail safety has taken a big hit under the Conservative government. One only has to think about the tragedy that befell Lac-Mégantic and the fact that, when that train was operating, it was operating with a one-person crew that was authorized by the Minister of Transport.

Food safety has taken a hit under the government. In addition to the listeriosis outbreak, we also had the largest ever recall of meat in Canada after many hundreds of people were made sick by the government's inaction.

Regarding airline safety, we heard today that the government is suggesting there will not be flight attendants for every door on a plane. Does that mean that, when I get on a plane, I am going to be told which door will not have somebody to help me out? Will I get a discount if I take an unsafe seat on an airline? It makes no sense, and we cannot continue to allow this kind of reduction by the government in what we hold dear as Canadians.

The OAS, or old age security system, has been reduced by the government. People will now have to work until they are 67. The Canada pension plan disability has had its definitions changed again. The new regulations have never been promulgated, so we still do not know exactly how that is going to work, but there is a gap between the Canada pension plan disability and OAS that the government has not yet filled. People are going to go for two years without any income.

The government has defunded or taken away money from such organizations as CIDA, KAIROS, and women's groups in this country, which used to have government funding to help them express themselves and take legal action where necessary.

Drug safety has taken a hit with the government's refusal to make sure that the OxyContin-like drugs are as safe as they can be.

Transparency and accountability have taken a big hit under the Conservative government. The Parliamentary Budget Officer had to go to court to get the government to tell us what the budget really means in terms of how many cuts there will be.

The national childcare program was, of course, the first thing the government tore down. Affordable housing is taking a hit every day as the amount of money the government is spending on affordable housing—of which my riding is in dire need—is dwindling as time goes on, every day and every week. Of course, the government voted against the Jack Layton budget that would have put in some money for affordable housing. That money is going to disappear.

We have a situation in my riding of York South—Weston where 90% of the people who live in the concrete apartment buildings that were put up in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s—and there are a lot of them—are in precarious housing. They have some kind of precariousness about them. That is an enormous number, and about 60% of the people in my riding live in them. They are not receiving government subsidies. There is no government amount that is going to disappear, but they are already in need.

There are 33% of those individuals who are in critical need and are an eyelash away from being homeless. That is thousands of Canadians in my riding of York South—Weston. This budget has absolutely nothing for that critical need of many Canadians.

This budget and this budget implementation bill is another big mess of things that have nothing to do with the things that Canadians need to have happen.

In fact, several of the things that the government promised, in this budget and in the last, have never been implemented. For example, in 2013, the former finance minister stood in this House and promised that whenever the government spent money on infrastructure, it would incorporate apprenticeships into that infrastructure spending. I thought, “Great. We've been pushing for this for a long time. Let's look for it in the budget implementation bill”.

One budget came along, and it was not there. Another one came along, and it was not there. This one came along, and there is still nothing to tie infrastructure spending—the government does spend some money on infrastructure—to training and development of the youth in need in this country.

We have a promise that was made by the government in this budget speech to do something about pay-to-pay billing. It is not there. It is not in the budget implementation bill. Phone companies, cellphone companies, and Internet companies are still going to be able to charge extra money for people to get their bill in the mail. To add insult to injury, those individuals, when they get their bill in the mail, are going to have to walk several blocks to get it because mail delivery to their homes is going to be stopped.

We have the Minister of State for Democratic Reform suggesting that persons can take a utility bill, a phone company bill, and use that to prove their identity. They cannot do that if it is from the Internet, though, because Elections Canada has already ruled that is inadmissible.

We have the government suggesting that people will be able to get their bills for free in the mail, which it did not provide for in this budget implementation bill, and at the same time suggesting they can use that same utility bill to prove their identity in an election. The government is being hypocritical in its suggestion that one thing can do one thing and one thing can do another. It does not make sense.

The government has also promised transparency and accountability. Where have we seen that? Nowhere.

One of the things that is most frightening about this budget implementation bill is the attachment to FATCA. For those who do not know FATCA, it is the way that the U.S. government is going to tax some Canadian citizens, about a million of them. Some of them are accidental Canadian citizens, who have never lived in the United States in their lives. They were born in Canada, lived in Canada all their lives, and now are being told that they are somehow American citizens because of their parents.

The government has in this bill suggested that it will now be all right, without notice to the individuals, for the banks to give information about the RRSPs, RDSPs, RESPs, and other assets that individuals have, to CRA, for the purpose of giving that information to another country. One assumes that the reason they are giving that information is so that somebody can come and take that money out of their bank accounts.

This is outrageous. We are a sovereign nation. Canada is a country unto itself. The ability of this country to protect its citizens should include the ability against another country coming after those citizens' money. I am talking about Canadian citizens here, not persons who are living in the United States and who are American citizens. Let the U.S. government come after them, but not Canadian citizens. We should not be assisting another government to manufacture a reason to come into a Canadian citizen's bank and take that money. That is not something we should be doing, and it should not be in this budget implementation bill.

If we need to have that discussion, let us have that discussion, but let us not do it in a budget implementation bill.

[Employees' Voting Rights Act, March 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I too am proud to be rising today to speak in opposition to this private member's bill. It is unprecedented in that it changes the Canada Labour Code in ways that only a government should. The Canada Labour Code is one of the crown jewels in the legislative mix the government has at its disposal in that it regulates how labour unions and their employers in the federal sphere do business with one another.

We in Canada have an almost unique system of labour relations. If we look at Europe or other parts of the world, the system of labour relations is not governed the way it is in Canada, and to a certain extent, in the United States. However, what drives that is the balancing act that goes on between employees and employers. It is that balance that is being tampered with here by the member's private member's bill. The balance is such that employers and employees have relatively equal weight, particularly in a unionized workplace, to afford themselves the ability to make sure that their working conditions, their level of pay, and the system by which they are hired, fired, kept on, and moved ahead is fair, reasonable, and acceptable to both sides.

Tampering with the Canada Labour Code through a private member's bill sends a bit of a shock wave through the whole labour and management community in our country.

It is not just labour that is opposed to this. We heard the name Mr. George Smith. I sat opposite Mr. Smith in bargaining on a considerable number of occasions. He was on the opposite side of the fence from us. He too is concerned that this is a backdoor way of making changes that have nothing to do with a problem that has developed in the way Canada's labour relations have been conducted. Instead, it is part of an ideological anti-worker drive that has been carried on by the government since at least I have been here, since at least it has had a majority government.

In my first few days as a member of Parliament, we spent quite a few hours here debating whether the government should force an end to a lockout at Canada Post. The government took the position that it should set the wages of Canada Post workers and should return them to the job with a lower wage than the company had already offered. That in itself is an anti-worker position. However, just Monday of this week, the member for Essex told me that Canada Post is an arm's-length agency and the government has nothing to do with it.

They cannot have it both ways. They cannot say on the one hand that Canada Post has nothing to do with the government and is therefore isolated and untouchable and at the same time, two short years ago, force those workers to take a lower wage increase than they had been offered by their employer.

It is part of the government's ideological bent to be anti-worker in our country. I say ideological, because there is no reason to it. Those workers are workers both in union and non-union workplaces.

Following hard on the heels of the Canada Post debacle, we then had the government ordering Air Canada workers, who had not even started a strike, back to work. There was no strike, yet we had a piece of legislation to order them back and to tamper with their collective agreement as well.

Then we had the Canadian Pacific workers. Canadian Pacific is a private corporation. We had the government interfering in that round of bargaining as well.

The government takes a position over and over again that is anti-workers in this country.

Then we had the spectre of the two of the three omnibus bills we have dealt with so far making changes to how workers and their employers manage their relations with one another. In one case, the government changed the holiday provisions of the labour code in an omnibus bill, which was never referred to in the budget but was in the budget implementation act. All of a sudden we find things appearing that are anti-worker and that change the terms and conditions of how they are to deal with employers. It is done in a sneaky way, with a few lines stuck in an omnibus bill that were never signalled, nor was there any complaint from any employers that there was a problem.

Then we had a reduction in the health and safety provisions of federally regulated workers in the next omnibus bill last year. Was there a big hue and cry from employers that they needed this change? There was none. The government just went ahead and did it. And the Conservatives did it because they are ideologically opposed to workers in this country, which is very dangerous.

We had the President of the Treasury Board trying to create some kind of crisis in the workforce that he represents and is the boss of, with his suggestion that the use of sick leave was somehow out of control. It turned out, when the real data came out, that it was not out of control and that there was not a massive problem of dozens of days of sick leave being used. In fact, his so-called averages had included time not paid for and time on long-term disability. So it made no sense, but it was part of the ideological spectrum that we have seen across the aisle.

Today, he gleefully announced that he had managed to wrest $1.7 billion out of these same workers, who will now have less money in their pockets. The Conservatives somehow have now reduced not just the workers', but also the retirees' future expectations of how much money they will have. It is part of the government's agenda to attack workers, to lower their standard of living, to lower their ability to pay for their heating bill of this winter, to pay for their drugs. All of the things that we expect to be able to pay for, the Conservatives have just said we cannot pay for as much as we used to be able to.

In the EI system, the current government has taken another ideological bent against workers. Already we are aware that only 40% of workers in this country can qualify for EI at any given moment. In addition, with the changes the Conservatives brought forward last year to the EI regulations, workers on EI will now have to accept a job paying 30% less than the job they were fired or laid off from. So we are driving down wages yet again with the EI regulations.

It does not have to be this way. We know that unions in this country contribute immensely to the gross domestic product of this country. If we compare unionized and non-unionized workplaces, generally across the country unionized workplaces pay about $5 an hour more than non-unionized ones, which results in about $730 million, nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars, a week extra into the economy. Where does that money go? It generally goes to purchases, to keeping a family with heat and light and clothing, to managing children's day care. All of these things that ordinary Canadians expect to be able to do, they are better able to do in a unionized workplace than a non-unionized one. Women do even better than that, having an average wage of $6 an hour more as a result of being in a unionized workplace.

So what is this bill attempting to do? It is attempting to make it more difficult to be in a unionized workplace. We have seen lots of statistics showing that is exactly what these changes would do. They would make it more difficult to start a union in the first place, and in workplaces where the unionized workforce decides to remove the union, it would make it easier to remove the union by lowering the threshold at which a vote must be taken.

Those of us who have done this work in the past know that once a vote is taken and that process is commenced, the employer starts to put pressure on the employees. The employer starts to use unfair and illegal intimidation tactics, which I have experienced, pressuring employees to vote against a union. That is precisely why we have card-check certification in this country, to avoid those intimidation and other pressure tactics by employers to force people to turn away from a union. Why do employers not like unions? It is because they know that unions do better for their workers, not because they hurt the workplaces themselves.

I look forward to voting against this bill when it comes up for a vote.

[Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act, March 26th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I am one of the individuals who will not be afforded an opportunity to speak on this bill, and I would have liked to speak on this bill before it is voted on here and sent to committee.

To the government members, there are not two days left. The minister keeps saying there are two. The motion actually says there will be one more sitting day for members to speak on the bill, which I will not have an opportunity to do.

However, there have been 34 days since the bill was last discussed, and now today. What has made it so urgent that it could not have been spoken on during any of those other 34 days? The government did not bring it forward.

It is not up to us to bring forward bills. It is up to the government. The government says that we have to do this immediately, now, and yet it has let 34 days lapse. It is so hypocritical. I wish the government would answer that very simple question.

Why now?

[Canada Post, March 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, if I had wanted the talking points that the Conservative Party has put together for the minister to talk about the need to change Canada Post, or the lack of funding that Canada Post is currently facing, I would have asked the Minister of Transport that question. However, I did not ask him that question. I asked it of the minister responsible for persons living with disabilities.

I did not get an answer to the question of what the government intends to do to force Canada Post to live up to our commitments to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. We should not go backwards. We should not make life worse than it already is for persons living with disabilities.

Canada Post has had 30 years of experience with community mailboxes, and it has not managed to find an acceptable alternative mail delivery system for those persons living with disabilities. In fact, all it has done for persons living with disabilities is offer them a spare key. As far as I am aware, that is the only thing Canada Post has up its sleeve at the moment. Therefore, that is completely unacceptable to the government and it should be unacceptable to all Canadians.

[Canada Post, March 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, on February 25 I asked the minister responsible for persons living with disabilities what the government would do to ensure that disabled Canadians are not adversely affected by the decision of Canada Post to end door-to-door mail delivery. The question was prompted, in part, by the passing of a resolution by the City of Toronto that rejected Canada Post's plan to convert from door-to-door delivery to community mailboxes. The city was particularly concerned by the effect this decision would have on seniors with mobility issues and on other persons with disabilities.

The minister responsible for persons with disabilities did not respond. Rather, the Minister of Transport responded that it was her understanding that Canada Post was working with national councils with respect to the disabled and disadvantaged to ensure that it can appropriately provide service.

I have been in contact with Canada Post on this issue, and its responses have been less than encouraging. Thus far, as far as I am aware, the only option ever presented to any disabled individual was to be given an extra key and be told to find a friend or relative to get the mail for them. In other words, Canada Post, which has been running community mailboxes for 30 years, still has not figured out how to deal with the very real problem of providing service to persons with disabilities.

When I suggested that the boxes were not cleared of snow and were inaccessible, the answer was to tell Canada Post which one it was, and someone would be sent out. Canada Post's stated position is that persons with disabilities who face an “unacceptable hardship” will be dealt with somehow. Canada Post does not know how, and it refused to define what it means by “unacceptable hardship”. Canada Post has failed to provide the service to persons with disabilities now, and to suggest that the horse will change its spots in the future is an extreme stretch of credibility.

Canada is signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. One of the principal tenets of that convention is that we should never go backwards. Life should always be made better, not worse, for persons living with disabilities. It is the minister's responsibility to ensure that federal institutions and organizations, such as Canada Post, do not drift backwards, regardless of the need to save money or to cut corners. In other words, our international commitments signed by the government should prevent any worsening of the standards of living for persons with disabilities. That will certainly be the case if they are forced to find other mechanisms to get their mail or are unable to receive mail because of inaccessible boxes.

I have witnessed community boxes that were completely inaccessible to a person in a wheelchair. They are not routinely cleared of snow. They are on the opposite side of a street, which itself is not cleared by the municipality. They do not necessarily have a curb cut for a wheelchair.

After 30 years, one would think Canada Post would have managed this situation. My point is that left to its own devices, Canada Post has 30 years of history to prove to us how competent it has been at dealing with persons with disabilities. It is not competent.

However, persons with disabilities have been able to avoid that incompetence by living in the 70% of private homes in Canada that still have door-to-door delivery or in an apartment building that has delivery to the lobby.

Before another community mailbox is installed, the federal government should take stern action to ensure that Canada Post cleans up its act. That means taking seriously the problem soon to be faced by the residents of Kanata, Oakville, and so on, and demanding that Canada Post's conversion plans cease.

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the comments of my colleague opposite. However, as has been said over and over again, the actual existence of fraud is negligible. It is zero. We are using a sledgehammer to kill something that is not happening. New Democrats would like the government to kill the bill.

On the issue of the member or his spouse having received more than one voter card, the voter card could only be used to identify where one lives. It cannot be used to prove who one is. Unless a person has fraudulent ID to prove that he or she is someone else, one cannot use a voter identification card to prove who one is. Unless the member is intent on committing fraud, which people are going to be able to do no matter what, regardless of whether there is a voter information card available, this whole business of removing the possibility of using a voter information card is a big red herring, and we really ought to get to the real problem, which we have identified.

There are problems with the lists. We know that there are problems with the lists. We know that there are problems with certain individuals abusing the process by phoning people and telling them not to vote. We know that there are problems with funding. Why can we not get at the real problems instead of this phony problem of the voter information card?

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the notion that we should stop voter education and voter encouragement is absolutely bizarre. The suggestion a little while ago by my friend from Etobicoke Centre was that it was because it did not work in the past. What? All of that information went for naught? I do not think so. I think the problem is that there was not enough of it. There was not enough voter information. There was not enough voter encouragement.

Canadians have told me at the door that they become tired of politics. That is something we want to change. We would like to see Canadians become more engaged, more responsible, become better participants in our civil democracy. That is what needs to happen, and it is not going to happen if Canadians are going to be turned away at every opportunity by the current government.

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, in fact there was an all-party agreement in the House that there should be strengthened authority for Elections Canada officials to compel witnesses, and that is not part of this bill. Why is it not part of this bill? It is because there are certain parties in the House who perhaps do not want to be caught out. We on this side of the House want every election to be conducted as honestly and transparently as possible. If that requires that people who cheat the system, or persons allied with the people who cheat the system, be compelled to give testimony, that is what should happen. It is not in this bill.

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, the difference is that in the case of an airport there have been examples of fraud and terrorism that have taken place with the wrong people getting on planes, or by the airport itself not being secure enough. One only has to go back to 9/11, in 2001, to realize that the system of security is of vital importance to the safety of individuals. We have had examples.

There are zero examples of voter fraud that the Conservatives can point to, or anybody can point to. The Conservatives are disenfranchising 120,000 people, and perhaps more, as a result of a story that was concocted about the wide range of voter fraud that might be happening. That is not a legitimate comparison.

[Business of Supply, March 24th, 2014]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to talk about this unfair elections bill.

Our elections process is going backwards. For the first time in Canada's history, we are disenfranchising people who have been enfranchised in the past. At every other step of the way, whether it was allowing women or aboriginal people to vote, or providing mechanisms for persons with disabilities or for persons who had difficulty proving their identity, we have always moved forward.

We have always moved to enfranchise people, and the Conservative government is moving backwards for the first time in our history. I think it is shameful.

Canadians expect us to fix some of the problems clearly identified by a number of events over the past, since the 2011 election, and even before that. Those events displayed to Canadians that there was a problem with voting: officials of Elections Canada were not following procedures appropriately; the lists are no good; the lists need to be improved; there is a considerably amount of potential cheating happening by political parties; and Canadians expect us to do something about it.

This bill does not do any of those three things. In fact, the bill makes cheating easier in some circumstances. It has absolutely no impact whatsoever on the list itself and on whether the list will in fact be improved—it will not. In terms of voting, all the bill does is disenfranchise a number of individuals who were able to vote before.

First, the minister and others keep talking about these 39 pieces of ID that Canadians can use. In fact, that is not true. None of them are in the bill. These pieces of ID are set by Elections Canada, with the exception that the bill says voters cannot use the voter information card. There are 38 pieces of ID. Those 38 include 25 pieces of ID that can prove who a person is. Then a person needs to find 1 of 13 pieces of ID to prove where he or she lives.

We are really looking at 13 pieces of ID. Those 13 are sometimes completely unavailable to some individuals. For example, a student living not in residence but at the home of another individual in another city wants to be able to prove that he or she lives there.

Those students do not receive a utility bill. They do not have a bank or credit card statement. They do not have vehicle ownership or insurance there. They do not have correspondence issued by a school, college, or university to that place because that is not their original residence. The correspondence would have gone to their other place. They do not have a statement of government benefits because they are not getting them. They do not have an attestation of residence on a first nations band or reserve. They do not have a government cheque or cheque stub. They do not have a pension plan statement of benefits.

They do not have a lease or a mortgage statement. They do not have income or property tax assessment notices because, again; it goes back to their original home. They do not have an insurance policy. They do not have a letter from a public curator, public guardian, or public trustee. They do not have a letter issued by a shelter, soup kitchen, a student residence, or a long-term care facility because they are not in any of those places.

Those students cannot prove their location. It is physically impossible. The government says there are 39 pieces of ID, but not for a student living not in residence and off-campus in another city. It is impossible for them to prove where they live. What are they to do?

In the days before this bill, these students could have been vouched for by someone who knew them, who did have the ability to prove where they live and who lived in the same riding. Now, that is absolutely being taken away from them. That is wrong.

I want to list three other cases of individuals in my riding who, in the last election, actually voted but who will not be able to vote in the next election because their ability to vouch is being taken away.

One of them was a senior citizen who had been living in the same place for the last 55 years, I think it was. For some reason, the voter information card did not arrive. We know what the reason for that was now: Elections Canada decided to change the postal code to the wrong one; another problem that needs fixing that is not being fixed by this bill.

That individual did not have anything to prove her location of residence. She had nothing, and she was terrified. I knocked at her door and reminded her to go vote. She said, “I cannot vote because I cannot prove where I live. I did not get a voter information card, which I would normally have used. I cannot do it now because I cannot prove where I live. I do not have my name on anything here.”

Her husband was standing next to her, and I told him that he could vouch for her. All he had to do was take her to the polling station, and with his ID he could vouch for her. They were overjoyed. However, that would be gone. The next time they would not be able to do that.

Another senior in my riding, who has lived in Canada for about 40 years, cannot get Ontario picture ID. She has been trying for two years. She cannot get it because she does not have the appropriate ID. She has a Canadian citizenship certificate, but it is not the card type; it is the big certificate type, which they will not accept in Ontario. She has a birth certificate, but it is from the wrong country, which they do not accept in Ontario. She has a passport. However, again, it is from the wrong country, which they do not accept in Ontario. She cannot get Ontario picture ID. She is in a position of not being able to use picture ID. She does not have the right kind of ID to vote in terms of proving where she lives. That is the nub of this problem, being able to prove where one lives.

She is now in the process of spending $130, which she does not have because she is a senior, to buy herself a passport. That passport will give her the ability to go to the Ontario government to prove who she is so she can get an Ontario picture ID card. That will cost her another $60. She is spending $190 to get enough ID to vote next time.

Why is it that Canadians have to spend money to vote? That should not happen, but that is happening in her case. It is going to take months. If this happened during the writ period, she would never be able to do that.

Finally, we have a person on disability payments, whose door I knocked on in the last election. I told her that she just needed to show the cheque stub that comes from the Ontario disability system to prove where she lives. She had nothing else. Persons on disability in Ontario are very impoverished. She could not afford cable or a phone, and she had no hydro bill. She had nothing to prove where she lived. Therefore, I suggested that she use the cheque stub.

A stub from a government cheque is a legitimate way of proving one's address. The trouble is, the Ontario government does not put a name and address on the stub. It is only on the cheque itself, which had already been deposited. She had no way of proving her address. In her case, she managed to find somebody in the building who would vouch for her; otherwise, she would not have been able to vote.

Those are three examples.

There is also the issue that Canadians want us to deal with of potential cheating by political parties during an election. There have been a number of allegations, news stories, and various things about robocalls, which were delivered to people to fraudulently send them to the wrong polling station. There were a number of issues regarding overspending by political candidates. There were issues regarding overspending by political parties, particularly the in-and-out scandal of 2006.

However, none of those issues are being dealt with in this proposed legislation. There would not be a way for Elections Canada to investigate properly, to subpoena evidence, to compel testimony, or force a political party to actually disclose what it has done. In fact, the bill goes one step further. It would permit a political party, in the guise of campaign fundraising, to have no limits on what it spends on communications with constituents, or with all of Canada.

The minister can correct me if I am wrong, but I doubt very much that the Conservative Party would give out a list of who it has sent communications to if asked by Elections Canada. The Conservatives have not been very forthcoming to this point, and I doubt they would do that to prove that individuals they communicated with have donated money in the past five years. That is unlikely and not going to happen. They are going to send stuff out willy-nilly. That is what will happen.

We would have no limit to the amount of communications that the party can send out during an election writ period, even though right now there is a limit on the amount of money that can be spent during an election. That is a very damaging piece of this puzzle.

I appreciate the time to explain why Bill C-23 does not work, and I urge members opposite to rethink their position and defeat the bill. Take a kill-the-bill position, as we like to say it.