RCMP raid Conservative party headquarters over election matter

[Dog Walker]

Disregard the post above. I did a search on google and found the following:

http://communities.canada.com/montrealgazette/blogs/onthehill/archive/2008/04/15/what-goes-around.aspx

  What Goes Around.......
One of the key players in today's raid on Conservative Party headquarters was a gentleman named André Thouin and who told reporters he was working with Elections Canada as he walked out of party offices with a brown cardboard box he said contained documents.
Could that possibly be the same André Thouin who once served as a chief superintendent with the RCMP before he retired from the force and whose testimony before the Gomery Commission helped convince Justice John Gomery that Liberal cabinet minister Alfonso Gagliano was indeed making decisions about what events should be sponsored. Gomery's inquiry into government sponsorships ended up playing a key role in the downfall of the Liberal government, much to the delight of Stephen Harper's Conservatives
Now it appears that Mr. Thouin is playing a key role in Elections Canada's probe into political party advertising violations by Stephen Harper's Conservatives, much to the delight of the Liberals.
What goes around......

So Mr Thouin could be an outside investigator or a consultant doing contract work for Election Canada and not an employee.

 

[Rodahn]

'Altered' ad invoice began Tory troubles

OTTAWA–It was the Conservative party's friends, not its political enemies, that aroused Elections Canada suspicions about overspending in the 2006 election campaign.

According to a sworn affidavit, executives with Retail Media Inc., the Toronto "media buying" firm for the Conservatives, balked when investigators showed them an invoice on the company's letterhead.

The executives "didn't recognize" the invoice, similar to that filed by about 15 Conservative candidates among 67 from the 2006 election seeking more than $825,000 in taxpayer-funded rebates.

Marilyn Dixon, chief operating officer, suggested the invoice "must have been altered or created by someone" because they didn't look like the ones her firm submitted to the Conservative Party of Canada.

Now, the party is under investigation for filing returns with Elections Canada "that it knew or ought reasonably to have known contained a materially false or misleading statement" on advertising expenses.

It is also facing allegations, unproven in court, that it conceived a scheme that would allow the national party to spend $1.1 million over its legal $18.2 million election expenses limit, leading to angry opposition charges yesterday that the Conservatives stole the election.

No formal charges have been laid under the Canada Elections Act, though three are under consideration. A lawsuit the Tory party launched to challenge the chief electoral officer's decision to deny rebates to candidates is on hold.

The details about the suspicious Retail Media invoice for $39,999.91 were laid out in a sworn affidavit filed by an elections investigator who sought a warrant to raid Conservative headquarters last week.

In the information sworn to obtain the warrant, investigator Ronald Lamothe, with the office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections, described a deliberate "in-and-out" scheme conceived to move money from national coffers into and out of the accounts of local campaigns, which have their own spending limits, in order to skirt the national spending limit.

An added benefit to any candidate who participated would be a "60 per cent windfall reimbursement" through the taxpayer-funded rebate, the affidavit said.

The invoice Lamothe showed Retail Media had been sent to candidate Steve Halicki's campaign for the riding of York South-Weston.

His official agent, Barbro Soderberg, told auditors she was uneasy about the advertising spending from the get-go but was assured by the party "this process is legal."

"As a bookkeeper, I know that sometimes you have to use creative accounting between small companies but I found this move was being a little too creative," Soderberg would later tell Elections Canada investigators.

Though unproven in court, the allegations are political dynamite.

A charge against a party's chief agent of providing returns containing false or misleading statements is liable to a range of penalties that include a $5,000 fine, five years' imprisonment or both, the deregistration of the party and liquidation of its assets, or for the party a $25,000 fine. The penalty for knowingly exceeding the election expense limit for a party's chief agent is a $1,000 fine, three months' imprisonment or both. A registered party is liable to a $25,000 fine.

Yesterday, the Conservative party denied any documents were doctored or falsified. "I don't think anything was supplied that was misleading," said government House leader Peter Van Loan. "The documents all laid out in some detail who was spending on what."

The explanation for the altered invoice? Party officials liken it to someone breaking out his share of a restaurant tab for expense purposes.

The affidavit documents how the Tory party figured out at the outset which candidates would buy into a regional TV and radio advertising plan and, based on pledges, booked airtime through Retail Media, for which the party paid in advance.

Retail Media later tallied the costs, broke down the amounts according to instructions from the national party officials, and sent invoices back to Conservative headquarters in Ottawa listing all the ridings and their allocation of costs.

Party officials say headquarters staff then stripped out the costs borne by other campaigns and showed only the amount pledged by the particular local campaign in the invoice it mailed to a candidate so he or she could claim advertising expenses, and reap rebates of 60 per cent of the invoiced spending.

They say there's nothing sinister about changing the original document and withholding the total spending on advertising because it was not information local campaigns needed.

Elections Canada doesn't buy it.

"Funds were transferred into and out of each of the bank accounts of the 67 campaigns ... entirely under the control of and at the direction of officials of the Conservative Fund of Canada and/or the Conservative Party of Canada," the affidavit alleges. "The purpose of the in and out transfers was to provide participating candidates with documentation to support their reimbursement claims for these election expenses."


http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/416912

 

[a_majoor]

Looking at the bigger issues:

http://canadaconservative.blogspot.com/2008/04/looks-like-i-not-only-one.html

Looks like I'm not the only one...

...to view the whole election financing issue the way I do.

  The Tories might have a point ...
    John Robson - The Ottawa Citizen
    Friday, April 25, 2008

    In the battle pitting the federal Conservatives against Elections Canada, the opposition and the press, a typical Ottawa competition to see who can perform most discreditably, my money was on the Tories. Until I made a crucial blunder: I did research.

    The key issue is whether the Conservative party, in the last election, could donate money to riding associations to purchase advertisements very similar to national ones without those ads being counted against national campaign spending and putting the party over the national legal spending limit. It was, at least to begin with, a dispute not about facts but about how to interpret the law.

    At this point I foolishly read what I hope were all the relevant sections of the 500-plus page Canada Elections Act. Here, in unavoidable legalese, is what I found.

    The Act does set separate spending limits for registered parties (clause 422.1) and for their candidates (clauses 440 and 441). But Clause 422 (2) lets parties give money to local candidates and not count it as "an election expense..." So the key question is whether those candidates can spend that or any other money, up to their local limit, on what is essentially national advertising. And the crucial Clause 407 (1) defines an "election expense" as "any cost incurred, or non-monetary contribution received, by a registered party or a candidate, to the extent that the property or service for which the cost was incurred, or the nonmonetary contribution received, is used to directly promote or oppose a registered party, its leader or a candidate during an election period." What in there says local spending must happen locally or concern local issues? I see nothing.

    Of course the courts might not agree with my interpretation. Or they may say the Tories did a legal thing but in a carelessly illegal way; one Liberal staffer suggested to me that the central problem was that local candidates did not technically "incur" the costs in question. Even if true, that claim hardly justifies Liberal MP Dominic LeBlanc's reference to "an Enron-style accounting practice" at a Thursday press conference.

    If recent allegations of document-tampering are substantiated, it's a whole different matter. But my legal opinion, worth what you paid for it less the cost of this newspaper, is that the Tories are right, even if too clever by half, on the initial issue.

    It has been suggested that this dispute reflects hostility between Elections Canada and the prime minister going back to his former life as libertarian head of the National Citizens' Coalition, waging court battles against what the coalition (rightly, in my view) called election "gag laws."

    But if so, it doesn't prove the primary fault lies with the Tories. I want a court to rule whether the dramatic police raid on Conservative party headquarters was necessary. And I'd certainly like to know how not only journalists but Liberal staffers heard of it in time to film it.

    Especially because former Chief Electoral Officer Jean-Pierre Kingsley took a strangely vocal role in policy debates for the head of an organization that, as part of the executive not the legislative branch of government, is supposed to enforce laws not create them. Liberal MP Ken Dryden wrote in the Toronto Star on Wednesday that the Tory financing scheme "isn't what Elections Canada intended" and that "Elections Canada set national and local limits" because it "intended that national spending be for national purposes, and local spending for local purposes..." as if it, not Parliament, had created the Canada Elections Act. Then Mr. Dryden waved away the Tory position because "Elections Canada has ruled that for advertising to be considered local, it must directly promote that local candidate or oppose his or her opponent...," as if the centuries-old struggle to keep the executive branch from creating law and acting as judge in its own case had recently been quietly and benignly settled in favour of Charles I.

    Mr. Dryden in his article and Mr. LeBlanc in his press conference both cited the Canada Elections Act provision that you cannot do indirectly what is expressly prohibited directly. OK. But it cannot be read as a Phantom of the Paradise style "All clauses that are excluded shall be deemed to be included" provision. If the Act does not directly forbid local candidates buying national ads, it does not indirectly forbid it either.

    The Tories responded to this ruckus in a manner at once paranoid and juvenile and it worked about as well as you'd expect. But it doesn't mean there's anything scandalous in their challenging a technical Elections Canada ruling in court, even if they ultimately lose.

    Besides, on my reading of the law, they might win.

    John Robson's column appears weekly.

    © The Ottawa Citizen 2008

 

[stegner]

This is the issue of the lawsuit between the CPC and Elections Canada-the debate over what constitutes national and local advertising.  It is not the issue of why millions of dollars were transferred into local accounts only to be transferred out just days later-which is the subject of the national Elections Canada investigation.   The in and out scheme allowed local candidates to claim the national funding as their own for reimbursement purposes which means that taxpayers would be on the hook for millions of dollars they should not be according to the laws. I see the CPC has succeeded in muddying the issue.  The other issue is separate and not a direct correlation as the CPC has asserted.  As for who leaked the raid to the Liberals (who showed up with cameras) and the media-why has no one considered the Conservative themselves as this has proved to distract many from the real issue at hand whether the CPC engaged in illegal activities by raising the spectre that civil servants are corrupt themselves and that they are being persecuted.  If they had not showed up many of these people would be asking different questions that is for sure.  Coincidence that every CPC mouthpiece is bringing this up?  I don't think so.  BTW.  All those CPC people saying that everybody does this and they have lots of evidence on this.  Put your money were your mouth is. or is this another evidence of in and out but merely with their word and honesty?

 

[SeaKingTacco]

Stegner-

My read of John Robson is that he has it about right- the Tories broke no laws, but were a little too clever.  He is also right about Elections Canada- they are not supposed to make the law- that is Parliament's job.

Finally, I do not believe that the Liberals have carefully thought through the implications of this.  All it takes is one Liberal Riding Association to be found o have sloppy accounting practices and they are in the same pit of mud as the Tories- and you want bet that there are any number researchers and journalists working on that right now. The more thoughtful of the Liberals have already noticed this.  Which is why you aren't seeing the Liberals pulling the Govt down over this is and getting an election started.

 

[stegner]

My read of John Robson is that he has it about right- the Tories broke no laws, but were a little too clever.  He is also right about Elections Canada- they are not supposed to make the law- that is Parliament's job.

The Court's will decide this.  Elections Canada is a regulatory body which means it enforces the law.  It has examined the books of all the candidates and has found that the CPC had clear discrepancies, while the other parties did not. 

Again,  you are missing the point there are two different issues here:

1.  National advertising at the local level or is it? (The subject of the lawsuit)

2.  Transferring money into a bank account and rapidly transferring it back out for the purposes of claiming a larger return from Elections Canada and for the national campaign to be below the cap required by law.  That is the "in and out" aspect. 

Which is why you aren't seeing the Liberals pulling the Govt down over this is and getting an election started.

This has no bearing on the validity of the accusations whatsoever.  There have been many scandals and Dion is being smart to wait as Harper keeps digging himself a deep hole.  Harper has lost all credibilty for being accountable.  He has also gotten Canada into a recession just 2.5 years after having inherited one of the strongest Canadian economies in history.  Like that Yes, Prime Minister episode when Sir Humphrey Appleby advised the PM that economists know nothing about the economy seems to hold true in this present instance.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

He has also gotten Canada into a recession just 2.5 years after having inherited one of the strongest Canadian economies in history.

Oh Please!

Stegner- I would like you to explain, in one hundred words or less, with references, how precisely any Canadian politician, much less the current PM is responsible for the Mortgage meltdown and liquidity crisis in the US- which is the true source of the current recession.  Besides, if PM Harper is truly responsible for this recession, then it would also logically hold true that Dalton McGinty would be equally responsible for mismanaging Ontario's manufacturing sector, would it not?

Again,  you are missing the point there are two different issues here:

1.  National advertising at the local level or is it? (The subject of the lawsuit)

2.  Transferring money into a bank account and rapidly transferring it back out for the purposes of claiming a larger return from Elections Canada and for the national campaign to be below the cap required by law.  That is the "in and out" aspect.

I am not missing the point.  It is not up to Elections Canada to decide the content of advertising- the Courts will clean their clocks on that point.  As for accounting- as I agreed, the CPC was probably too clever by half.  Not as clever as the Liberal Party "sponsoring" themselves with $40 million of taxpayers money, but still, too clever.

There have been many scandals and Dion is being smart

Recent history would not prove your point.  Mr Dion has had circles run around him in and out of Parliament for the past year.  He is a dead man walking- most of the senior Liberals appear to want him to lose the next election so that the next leader can get on with beating the Tories.  And to be fair- in the fullness of time, the Liberals will regain power in Ottawa.  It is the way of the world

 

[stegner]

Oh Please!

Stegner- I would like you to explain, in one hundred words or less, with references, how precisely any Canadian politician, much less the current PM is responsible for the Mortgage meltdown and liquidity crisis in the US- which is the true source of the current recession.  Besides, if PM Harper is truly responsible for this recession, then it would also logically hold true that Dalton McGinty would be equally responsible for mismanaging Ontario's manufacturing sector, would it not?

It is precisely because they claim the credit when times are good like Harper did last year.  You can't claim that your economic policies have created huge economic growth one year and than claim that you can't control the economy the next when the economy is bad.  Can't have it both ways.  I would find Dalton McGuinty at more fault if he could control the Canadian dollar-but he can't.  He is not without blame though.   

He is a dead man walking- most of the senior Liberals appear to want him to lose the next election so that the next leader can get on with beating the Tories. 

The exact same was said about Stephen Harper as late as October 2005.  Funny how he proved his critics wrong.  I agree that Dion has to go but it is most likely that he will end as PM within the next two years.

I am not missing the point.  It is not up to Elections Canada to decide the content of advertising- the Courts will clean their clocks on that point.  As for accounting- as I agreed, the CPC was probably too clever by half.  Not as clever as the Liberal Party "sponsoring" themselves with $40 million of taxpayers money, but still, too clever.

Funny thing though- 40 million did not go to the Liberal Party of Canada.  In truth, it was probably closer to the amount that Harper seeks to get from Elections Canada.  Funny how the Liberals never argued that every party was doing what they were doing or that there were moles and civil servants out to get them as the CPC is now.   

 

[armyvern]

We're in a recession?? I didn't know that. How come everyone's talking about how much BETTER the Canadian economy is holding up than the US'?

Sure exports from central Canada have declined (but that's what happens when your huge neighbour to the South IS in a recession and simply isn't importing and buying your overly priced-to-pay-too-high-union-autoworkers), but things remain steady out west.

Even the experts are saying that IF we do go into a recession, it won't be widely felt accross Canada, and will not come close to resembling the recession of the late 80s-early 90s. That's because ... the suffering is mostly limited to that central area of Canada who are now reaping the "benefits" of their overpriced costs of doing business in the past. Mr Hargrove is certainly quick to call for government intervention to devalue our dollar (still at record strength levels -- even WITH Harper in power -- go figure  ) to protect those manufacturing jobs ...

The remainder of the economy remains strong, and growth is still steady in the West. Unemployment is expected to remain low.

If Harper was doing such a bad job our dollar wouldn't be anywhere near where it is today ... and we'd be in the same situation as the US. We are not. Not even close to it, but we do get to feel the ripple effect of their recession up here in the North and it really wouldn't matter which party was in power for that to be a fact.

 

[SeaKingTacco]

I would find Dalton McGuinty at more fault if he could control the Canadian dollar-but he can't.  He is not without blame though.   

You cannot be seriously advocating that we deliberately devalue our currency, just so that we can continue exporting to the US?  In my mind, there are only two ways of doing that- cutting interest rates to near zero or printing money.  Both (either) would cause inflation to run well above the 2 percent Bank of Canada target and would in the long term, be far more harmful than a recession for a year or two that usually has the effect of shaking the weak or ineffective performers out of the market.

Look- all politicians like to take credit for good economic times- Chretien did it; Mulroney did it;

everyone does it.

  Why don't we just stipulate that all politicians will take credit for good things and blame bad things on others- I can live with that.

I agree that it is not outside the realm of possible that Dion could become PM- probably in a very narrow minority Govt situation that would mirror what we currently have on the go now.  That will not stop the sharks in the Liberal Party from circling very long- he will get knocked off by his own party sooner, rather than later.

 

[stegner]

  Why don't we just stipulate that all politicians will take credit for good things and blame bad things on others- I can live with that.

Perfect!

You cannot be seriously advocating that we deliberately devalue our currency, just so that we can continue exporting to the US?

No. We can't really do that   I think Canada needs to come with an economic plan that is not so reliant on exports.  We are putting all our eggs into one basket   Whatever happened to Canadians making stuff for themselves?

 

[Yrys]

hatever happened to Canadians making stuff for themselves?

I had to make an homework on Québec production, importations and exportation a few years ago. I was pissed off at seeing how much woods
we were exporting to re imported finish products at higher cost ...

 

[SeaKingTacco]

No. We can't really do that  I think Canada needs to come with an economic plan that is not so reliant on exports.  We are putting all our eggs into one basket  Whatever happened to Canadians making stuff for themselves?

Looked at a map of Canada lately?  We are a country of 33 million people inhabiting the second largest land-mass on the planet.  80% of those 33 million (about 26 million people) live within 200 Miles of the US/Canada border.  How, precisely, do you propose to create an economic structure in Canada that does not rely on exports- and by extension, with most of those exports going to the largest market in the world (the US) that is also our closest market?

This thread is beginning to drift, but I will just say that while we could always do more to diversify our export markets, geography and history tie us, more or less, to the US.

I'll just close by saying:

Liberals=bad
Conservatives=good

 

[stegner]

Looked at a map of Canada lately?  We are a country of 33 million people inhabiting the second largest land-mass on the planet.  80% of those 33 million (about 26 million people) live within 200 Miles of the US/Canada border.  How, precisely, do you propose to create an economic structure in Canada that does not rely on exports- and by extension, with most of those exports going to the largest market in the world (the US) that is also our closest market?

I didn't say it was easy  

This thread is beginning to drift, but I will just say that while we could always do more to diversify our export markets, geography and history tie us, more or less, to the US.

Agreed

Liberals=bad
Conservatives=good

Grrrrrr

 

[Yrys]

Grrrrrr

(and yes, mods, you can erased that post ... )

 

[Edward Campbell]

The received wisdom and the Liberal view of Canada has been, since reciprocity went down the drain in 1911, that we needed to stop being hewers of wood and drawers of water – profitable though it was to provide resources to the American factories. So, building on the Conservatives’ fearful, small-minded National Policy, and being always conscious of Québec nationalism, a policy was created that aimed to create an industrial base, sheltering behind tariffs, in Québec and Ontario selling second and even third order goods to all Canadians and even Americans and other foreigners.  The Second World War changed all that. The plan got turned upside down: Ontario benefited hugely, Québec far less than it probably deserved.

But, that aside, from the ‘50s to the ‘90s the universe unfolded as it should have, etc, and Ontario got rich and then richer; rich enough, with a bit of help from resource rich BC and Alberta, to buy off Québec and Atlantic Canada. Then along came the Arabs and oil became a weapon. The price of oil went from about $3.00/bbl in 1958 to $111.00/bbl in 208 – a 37 fold increase.  (There are some good data in this nine month old CBC news story.) Now, with China weighing in with a (momentarily) insatiable demand for resources, the economic model is all wrong. Even though we spent the ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s debasing our currency in order to sustain low-skill/high salaried metal bending jobs in Ontario and Québec the world was having none of it as the century (and millennium) turned. Our dollar became a petrodollar – driving the cost of Ontario and Québec products up and up and up even as it enriched Alberta and now BC and Saskatchewan, too.

Ontario can adapt – it need not become another Québec. But, there are two Canadas now, divided by the Ottawa River:

• Old Canada, everything East of the Ottawa River, including momentarily oil rich Newfoundland and Labrador, has stagnant economies, declining populations and a habit of living off equalization payments.

• New Canada, everything West of the Ottawa River, is growing fast and well because that’s where almost all the immigrants are going. Money pours in and people put their skills and knowledge to making more and more of it. New Canada is not afraid to experiment; it is not afraid to challenge, for example, the idea of a Maoist health care system.

Ontario has no choice but to adapt to being part of New Canada; it cannot indulge in Old Canada’s political choices – immensely popular though they may be. This puts the Liberals in a huge muddle. They want to blame Conservative Alberta for everything that’s wrong with the world but Ontario’s remaining good low skill/high pay metal bending jobs depend upon a steady stream of world priced Alberta oil to go into the fuel tanks.

The Liberals are the natural governing party of Old Canada and of the Old Canadian model. The Conservatives are not and need not be the natural governing party of New Canada but, unless and until the Liberals can wring the last vestiges of Pierre Trudeau’s socio-economic illiteracy out of the party, they may be the only choice.

For the moment we are back to being hewers of wood and drawers of water – and it is still profitable. Ontario has to migrate to being a knowledge and service economy. California, Massachusetts and even Texas  provide useful models. Stegner is right, the change – the absolutely mandatory change – will not be easy, nor will it be pleasant for many, many Canadians. But, it will come and nothing the Liberals can say or do will stop it. The question is: can the Liberals change, too?

 

[Brad Sallows]

>You can't claim that your economic policies have created huge economic growth one year and than claim that you can't control the economy the next when the economy is bad.  Can't have it both ways.

Sure you can.  It is entirely reasonable for the Chretien, Martin, and Harper governments to claim that their economic policies benefited Canada, and that the current "bad" economy - to the extent that it really exists and is not just a figment of doomsayers' imaginations - is the result of forces beyond any reasonable expectation of being under our control: events in the US.

 

[sboatright]

Interesting article by John Robson in the Ottawa Citizen on the "In and Out Scandal".  Considering how this story was the front page on most of MSM when it was only allegations and innuendos - why is it that NOBODY but Robson is touching this?


http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/columnists/story.html?id=b92b618d-d777-4539-b553-c34b3a5b0376&p=2#commentsFormTitle

John Robson . The case of the disappearing scandal
John Robson, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, July 18, 2008

Remember how the old Perry Mason TV program would end with his brilliant interrogation trapping the guilty party into sobbing out a confession? It's very much unlike watching a parliamentary committee in action. I liked Raymond Burr's show better.

As a rule, MPs on committees seem to have very hazy goals in questioning witnesses and no coherent strategy for reaching them. But things were far worse at this week's special meeting of the Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics Committee, apparently summoned for the sole purpose of generating silly-season headlines about Tory sleaze based on a supposed election financing scandal. First, opposition members wasted their time trying to get Canada's Chief Electoral Officer, Marc Mayrand, to slam the Tories in ways he had explicitly said at the outset he would not do, because he could not comment on anything currently before the courts or under investigation by the Commissioner of Elections Canada.

Then Pierre Poilievre led off for the Tories. Since he usually reminds me of Mason's haplessly belligerent TV nemesis, DA Hamilton Burger, I wasn't expecting things to improve. But he surprised me with not one, nor two, but three of the dramatic moments that habitually marked the climax of the old Mason show.

First he asked Mr. Mayrand why slide 6 of his PowerPoint handout to the committee defined "Candidate election expenses" as "any expense incurred, or property or service used to directly promote or oppose a candidate during an election period" when the Elections Canada candidates' handbook for the 2006 election (on p. 25) directly quotes clause 407(1) of the Canada Elections Act that it must be "used directly to promote or oppose a registered party, its leader or a candidate during an election."

Since the crux of this matter is spending by local candidates to promote the national party, the altered wording to leave out "party" is not a trivial omission. (Especially as the latest, 2007 Elections Canada candidates handbook also removes the reference to parties (see p. 27) while citing the same, unaltered, clause 407(1) of the Elections Act.) But Mr. Poilievre wasn't done with his fireworks.

He then read an e-mail worth quoting in full: "Hi Phyllis, We are told by communications folks in BC that these were radio ads with the Candidate's personal tag on the end -- therefore a local expense to be reported under the Candidate's expense ceiling, regardless of who pays. For rebate purposes, we were asked to bill each campaign -- in the case of VanEast, $2,612.00. The good news is that the Federal Party will transfer $2,600 to the Federal Riding Association as we agreed to pay for the ads. We hope that you are able to squeeze this in under the ceiling. Some expenses are not considered election expenses subject to spending limits, such as fundraising costs. Please have a look at the totals and get back to us if you think we have a problem." It was signed by the federal party bookkeeper.

It sounds like sharp practice. But did it require investigation? Mr. Mayrand refused to comment without more information. So Mr. Poilievre revealed that it was an NDP e-mail obtained by the Tories from Elections Canada. Yet Mr. Mayrand testified that no other party had engaged in the sort of "in-and-out" financing that prompted him to refuse dozens of Tory reimbursement claims and ask the Commissioner of Elections Canada to investigate.

The third Mason-style moment concerned Mr. Mayrand's attempt to show that his office had not given the press or the Liberal party a heads-up on the police raid on Conservative Party HQ. In his opening statement the Chief Electoral Officer said an internal review had cleared him and his staff, though when Scott Reid on a point of order required him to table the review he quickly downgraded it to "not truly a report, barely a sheet."

So Mr. Poilievre asked who conducted the review and Mr. Mayrand grudgingly confessed that it was one M. Mayrand. Since he certainly wouldn't let the Tories investigate themselves on the in-and-out affair, Mr. Poilievre called it surprising that he'd think it appropriate to investigate himself on the leak. And it is.

The more I watch this stuff, including the ugly procedural fiddling on Wednesday, the more convinced I am that if there's a scandal here, it doesn't involve the Tories. But nobody seems to care. The opposition want a scandal, the press want a scandal, and since everybody who's anybody knows Conservatives stink, let's not bore ourselves with details on a beautiful summer day.

Imagine a Perry Mason show where, after the dramatic denouement, the jury convicted his client anyway. I expect it would be cancelled in a hurry.

John Robson's column appears weekly
© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

 

[a_majoor]

Funny how some things are not being investigated:

tp://rightoncourse.blogspot.com/2008/08/do-santas-elves-vote-liberal.html

Do Santa's Elves Vote Liberal?

The completely unequal treatment that Elections Canada gives with respect to the Conservative Party and Liberal Party continues. And this time it's taken an almost bizarre turn.

Conservative Queen has managed to find donation returns that the Liberals submitted to Elections Canada back in 2006. Among the donors that are listed, 6 of them were listed as having the postal code HOH-OHO. Yes, apparently these Liberal donors live up at the North Pole with Santa.

Of course there was no investigation or action taken by Elections Canada with regards to the donations. If it was the Conservatives who had done something like this, there likely would have been a full-scale investigation into the entire Conservative Party donation structure. But when it comes to Elections Canada, unequal treatment is now the name of the game.

Mayrand and his buddies surely deserve a lump of coal for Christmas this year.

ht: Conservative Queen

Since Elections Canada is supposed to be a non partisan agency, stuff like this really hurts their credibility. If this continues, people might begin to wonder if the actual election process in Oct 2009 will be justly administered?

 

[stegner]

Funny how some things are not being investigated:

Wow stop the presses!  This is way bigger than the Conservatives transferring thousands upon thousands of dollars in and out of accounts, which could be called fraud or even money laundering by some.  Please explain why you would only need to keep money in an account for less than 24 hours?  Why would there be hundreds of transactions like this?  Why was it only the Conservatives that did this in and out business? Maybe the Conservatives don't only share girlfriends with bikers perhaps accountants as well?  Mayrand was appointed by Harper by the way.  His qualifications?  Honest and hard-working. The conspiracy theorists need to put their tin foil hats back on.  The public service is not out to 'get' Harper.