It's not like there couldn't be loopholes thru the regulations, especially if a morally and ethically challenged so-called leader devised it. Take an industry that was particularly beholdened to having its agenda and interests protected. Said industry would have the money and clout to purchase the leadership of a political party for its chosen son, pay off the debt of his nearest rival/co-conspirator, and be powerful enough to have the right lawyers/accountants to make it almost untraceable.
Said industry employs thousands of people across the country, not just one rich province. It could, if it wished, pro-offer hidden incentives to its employees, who are scanned and prescreened by superiors, on joining up with this program, knowing full well that it on the surface looks completely legal and will provide them with a nifty tax refund at the end of the year. It would also help prevent, as sold to the brethren, a relapse to some ugly NEP-like behemoth that some other political party would/could/should dream up.
I don't say this is happening, because obviously, someone would have stepped forward somewhere. Unless the benefits were extremely cool – tickets to the gold medal game, perhaps?

Answer the question : what have Harper and McKay got to hide ? What about all that transparency they were talking about before Harper took power ?

I didn't even mention Dryden, for that very reason. All the names I did mention – Stephane Dion, Gerard Kennedy, Martha Hall-Findlay, Maurizio Bevilacqua, and Joe Volpe – borrowed money from other people. Wealthy people. People I'm sure they feel beholden to. And as it turns out, they all did this illegally, because those debts now amount to illegal contributions.

Also, I was under the impression that it was Chretien who changed the rules, not Harper.

If any of these guys had any wealthy lenders they would have made sure they organized enough fundraisers to make sure they didn't become illegal donors, don't you think? The fact that the loans are still outstanding kinda shows that they aren't so powerful or wealthy.

Fortunately, I can rebut this with actual data. Here is the complete list of Stephane Dion's individual lenders.

Bronfman, Stephen R. ($50,000)
Bryden, Roderick M. ($50,000)
Carroll, James E($30,000)
de la Bruyere, Marc ($100,000)
Guerrera, Salvatore ($50,000)
Hoffmann, Christopher S.L. ($25,000)
Nault, Remi ($50,000)
Stephanos, Mamdouh ($350,000)

You give me de la Bruyere and Stephanos, but not Bronfman? These people are millionaires. Some are worth hundreds of millions, yet in your previous comment you said "the fact that the loans are still outstanding kinda shows that they aren't so powerful or wealthy."

I'm not suggesting that they have some kind of pernicious influence over their debtors. I'm merely pointing out that wealthy lenders and donors have played a significant role in financing Liberal leadership campaigns.

That's pretty rich coming from the guy who started this whole thread by claiming "and once they've bought another election with their massive piles of money from their rich donors…"

It's ironic, don't you think? The evidence shows that not only was your original claim spectacularly wrong, but your gibe about "rich donors" would be more properly applied to your own party.

I didn't give you Bronfman on a $50,000 loan, especially when Dion had many of them and these were loans for Dion.

Look, CR, you've argued part of your argument well. Problem is, you are arguing in support of the part of your argument I agree with. The Liberals are too reliant on too few donors and too many of these are big wealthy donors.

I just don't think any of this supports your main point, that the Liberal Party is beholden to wealthy donors lenders who lent money to the loser candidates and to Dion (who's out). If you look at Iggy's donors, he had the most donors and the second lowest donation per donor ratio. Besides, no one is beholden to anyone for $1100 a year.

More to the point, I don't for the life of me see how these known small lenders to also rans (including Dion now) could possibly have more influence of the Liberal Party than the large wealthy donors to Harper and McKay who remain unknown and so are much more free to continue influencing the Conservatives and to do so without that level of scrutiny.

Chretien capped donations at $5400 and prohibited corporations and unions from donating. Harper reduced the cap to $1000 and then, after the Liberal leadership campaign, added rules on loans (he tried to make them retroactive but, at least in this case, his advisors telling him unenforceables laws aren't good won the day; still, some of the loan rules did still apply).

I was not tryin gto blame Harper for the Liberal leadership debts. I blame the candidates themselves and the Liberal Party.

Harper tried to make the $1000 cap retroactive. That didn't work. But Chretien's rules only applied to the year of the leadership race. Once it was done on December 31, 2006, contributors could only donate $1000. I.e. after the convention, in order to pay off the loans, they were subject to the $1000. In addition, because of the rules Harper brought in, no one could come in and secretly pay off a $400,000 debt.

The only thing I said about Harper was how fortunate for him the rules changes after his leadership race.