Procedure and House Affairs committee  The length of time depends on the volume of the returns that come in. We do not send out our campaign expense subsidy cheques until that return has been reviewed and approved. In the case of the parties, there is a clause within our legislation that allows the chief electoral off

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Sure.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, and we need to be clear. There's a difference between a loan defaulting and a loan being assumed, so in the event that a candidate has a liability at the end of the campaign, it's not defaulted; it would be assumed by the constituency association. So it may be that the finan

Procedure and House Affairs committee  If a loan has a guarantor and that loan is called by the financial institution, it defaults, then the guarantor has those options.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  So if a—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Right. The loan goes into default—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Right. So in that situation, those five individuals would have—the association would owe them those funds, their share of that—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  They can't waive that loan. If they waive that loan and say they don't have to be paid back, then that becomes a contribution.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Right, within the contribution limits.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  And if the amount of loan was larger than the contribution limits and it all hit in one year, then the association would be required to either reimburse it—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Or forfeit that amount of money to Elections Ontario. It then becomes an ineligible contribution, if it's over the limit.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In terms of who's liable in default, I can repeat that if a candidate has a loan and that loan becomes the responsibility of the association because it's not repaid at the end of the campaign period—I should mention that certainly the expectation, the requirement, is that any cam

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Right.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I do not have statistics with me. I can certainly try to provide to the committee where we have those statistics available. We don't track the financial activity in terms of defaulted loans. What we do on an ongoing basis is make sure that the information we're getting in those f

Procedure and House Affairs committee  I wasn't sure whether that was a statement or a comment around whether it was better to transfer or not.