Procedure and House Affairs committee  They should go back to 2007. Even better would be 2004, when corporate and union donations were limited to $1,000 annually. That was effectively a ban. The audit should look at that whole period. Elections Quebec waited from the late 1970s until 2011 to finally do an audit, and w

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Under the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct—it used to be rule 8 and now it's rules 6 to 10—someone who should be registered but is illegally avoiding registration is not allowed to organize a fundraising event. This would hold even in cases of an unregistered lobbyist being on the boar

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Ontario has gone too far, although not with their donation limit. If you have a $100 donation limit, then any event that you hold is a democratic event because an average voter can afford to go, so there would be no problem with MPs or cabinet ministers having events. To make any

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  No, it's just a bit more transparency. That's all. There aren't really any effective limits on cash for access or big money. The government is apparently looking at political finance and it seems a bit more focused on third parties more generally, but I'm appealing to the Liberal

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. Just to give Quebec a bit more credit, it was $12.8 million in funnelling, not $128 million.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It's $12.8 million over a five-year period, so it's a significant sum. It was what they thought was likely funnelled, because they identified executives giving the maximum, near the same time, from several businesses. The report is on their website. You can see the details. Ele

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Elections Canada said they were going to do it in 2013. Here we are, four years later. We saw the compliance agreement with SNC-Lavalin over what they found with them from 2004 to 2011. It's hard for me to believe that only one company has done this in the period since corporate

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Very much so. In that way and in many other ways, this bill does not stop cash for access. Staff of cabinet ministers are not even covered. They're often important people for somebody to be able to see at an event, connect with and have a chance to corner and lobby a bit. It's

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, the only way that Democracy Watch thinks that loans should be allowed is if you set up a public fund and the loans come from a public fund. The current taxpayer subsidy on donations is essentially a public fund, so replace it with something that replaces loans that are given

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, but very publicly, and it would be disclosed. All donations should be disclosed before people vote. That's another big flaw in our system. I didn't go into all the details of every single one of the 11 changes that we're calling for, but all donations should be disclosed bef

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thankfully we have a perfect working model at the federal level with leadership candidates. Coming up to an election is the real problem area, because although quarterly donations are disclosed by the parties, an election can take place in between that, and people don't see the d

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, there is another way to deal with it, and I'll mention it in a second, but Quebec essentially decided that even with the $100 donation limit, one person from a big business with thousands of employees could walk into the party offices and say these thousand cheques are from

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, I agree with a threshold for the funding, and if the system was changed to a proportional representation voting system, having the threshold would also be appropriate. I think that you should have a certain percentage of support in order to be able to tap into that funding.