The tables have turned

It was bad enough news for the Cons that Canadians are now focused on less abstract issues than government accountability going into the next election campaign. But the Cons may soon be in much bigger trouble in being stuck on the wrong side of that issue as well:

The Conservative government is proposing to open a loophole in its vaunted accountability act by declaring that party convention fees not be counted as political contributions under the law.

It is also rejecting Liberal amendments that would toughen the legislation...

In a newly posted government order paper, the Conservatives appear to tacitly concede they were wrong when they claimed there was no need to declare the fees.

The government is now proposing that convention fees not count as political contributions, unless the fees exceed the cost of running the convention.

Now, the Cons will surely bleat about how accountability means only what they want it to mean, and therefore it's everybody else's fault for not implementing their bill without question. But between the new Lib amendments, the NDP's focus on the omission of the promised improvements access to information, the Cons' effective admission that they broke existing rules in the absence of the party-covention loophole as of their last convention, and the Cons' own moves to water down their original legislation, it's not hard to see the Cons' most important swing issue from the last campaign turning into a negative for PMS in the next one. And if that happens, then the Cons' current slide in the polls may be just the beginning.