Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure. From my perspective, having to organize armies of individuals to get to every church basement and elementary school gymnasium to make sure that our signs are in a prominent spot would add tremendously to the burden of election day. We would probably not do that or speak in favour of it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Oh, oh, I'm going after the accountant now.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There are candidates who are names on ballots, who are staff people for members of Parliament or senators, who are running in what we call low-resource areas. For these people, they're a name on a ballot. They give the opportunity to the local people to vote for all the political options before them.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, none whatsoever.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There's a whole host of things that would reduce the regulatory burden on the local campaigns. I highlighted a few of them. Obviously we do want accountability; we do want to make sure. But some of these provisions.... For instance, if you have no financial transactions, it's very hard to explain to somebody why they have to open up a credit union or bank account.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  There's one on this committee: go figure. There is finally some news coming out of all this--

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's right.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Understood, but the benchmark I was using here is if you don't get your rebate back: you don't get your rebate or your deposit back if you don't get that 10% or more. That was the litmus test I was talking about.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Certainly. They do a return and that return is eventually audited anyway, but the litmus test is whether or not they get rebate money back from the taxpayer. That's what I'm saying. That's the cut-off. If you're not getting any money back from the taxpayer, then you file your return, and it will eventually get audited--but no audit when you file your return.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  One way to look at what is being done in Canada and other jurisdictions is to call Elections B.C., or the Alberta authorities, or Quebec or Elections Ontario, to find out what they've put in place. I, like Mr. Arnold, did not come here with any Internet fraud solutions today. That's not my area of expertise.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. The offering here is to monetize one's performance at an all-candidates meeting. It's something that we couldn't disagree with more. There's no way that you could add a value to one's performance, one's exposure to it. I can't imagine what the market value of that would be.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It could be very unbalanced; you could have organizations that only invite certain individuals to participate. But I don't think Elections Canada is going to be an effective vehicle to regulate that. I can't imagine it.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We're very much in favour of it. We have it going on in British Columbia and Alberta. Quebec and Ontario are doing partial and pilot projects. This institution needs to get with the times. We have a voting challenge. The voters list is not good. We need full enumeration, and until that time, we need to give the tools to the Chief Electoral Officer to stop the bleeding.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I am. I believe it was an economic statement back in November of 2008--

Procedure and House Affairs committee  --and I think we've covered that off pretty well, and I think we've certainly convinced our friends on this side of the committee table that it was not a provision that we were willing to support.