a) Why only members of a party? Why not just ban personal contributions altogether, not increase the limit? Increasing the limit simply gives more power to wealthy people at the expense of those less well off.

b) Corporate and union donations were stopped by Chretien many years ago when he introduced the per vote subsidy. Harper did not change any legislation to allow such contributions again. By the way, the reason that Chretien ended corporate and union donations was because of endless complaints from the other parties that the Liberals were cleaning up on corporate donations! Meanwhile, there had always been incessant complaints from the right about unions supporting the NDP. Now it seems like Conservatives think that unions somehow support the Liberal Party - the one thing we learned from the last election was that the unions, even more than most other people, wanted Harper and the Conservatives gone, so now we have griping about third party advertisements.