A lawless retrospective

To follow up on this afternoon's story about Stephen Harper's apparent Canada Elections Act violation, let's take a look at just how sanctimonious Harper was while he himself was breaching the law.

Based on his accumulated donations including the convention fee, Harper went over the Elections Act donation limit on October 31, 2005 - and was accordingly was in violation of s. 405(1)(a) from then on. The very next day in Question Period (which happened to follow the release of the first Gomery report), Harper had this to say:

Mr. Speaker, one would think there would be some element of shame from the Liberal Party regarding today's report but there is none whatsoever.

I want to get past the bluster. The Prime Minister wants to take credit for the Gomery commission. Does he accept his part of the blame for the creation of the sponsorship program in the first place, yes or no?

We'll eagerly await Harper's shame for both his party's and his own breach of the law for their own benefit. But based on today's article, it looks like they're instead seeking to take credit for trying to cover up their tracks by changing the law.

This was followed up the next day by a clear call for punishment of those responsible for breaking the law in the name of partisanship:

As Gomery noted, not only were public funds wasted and misappropriated, but no one has been held responsible or punished.

The Liberal Party of Canada executed this scandal. It was executed by some of its highest officials for the benefit of the party. Why is the government not suing the Liberal Party to recover the millions that are lost and stolen?

Of course, all indications are that nobody from the Cons has been held responsible or punished for their own misdeeds, even though the Cons' breach appears to have put illicit money in the Cons' coffers for a closely contested election.

Fast forward one more day, and you'll find Harper criticizing the Libs for a belief that they're above the law:

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal Party somehow believes it can make a plea bargain with itself. It is trying to be above the law.

This scheme was not set up for the benefit of a few bit players or a few ad companies. This was a scam, first and foremost, by the Liberal Party, of the Liberal Party and for the Liberal Party.

I'm not aware of Harper publicly commenting on whether he plans to try to plead his way out of his own apparent offence, but it's hard to escape the conclusion that the Cons are doing their best to try to have their own self-serving offences plea-bargained out of existence now by casually restating the numbers which they certified a year ago.

Let's move ahead to November 21, when Harper asked how a party which itself had broken the law could claim to uphold it:

On another matter, a few days before an election is to be called, the Prime Minister prefers to criticize the leader of the Parti Québécois rather than work with the federalist Premier of Quebec. He is trying to pass himself off as the champion of federalism by citing the Clarity Act.

How can a party that has acted illegally for years now claim to be the guardian of the law in Quebec?

How indeed, Stephen? (While in fairness Harper was only apparently acting illegally for roughly one year, there's no indication that he himself sought to rectify any violation before the Cons themselves took the initiative to send his excess donations back...making it rather difficult to credit him for any resolution.)

Once the campaign started, Harper was quick to promise that all wrongdoing by parliamentarians would be quickly and decisively dealt with by his government:

"There's going to be a new code on Parliament Hill: bend the rules, you will be punished; break the law, you will be charged; abuse the public trust, you will go to prison."

Let's be generous and leave it open to Harper to determine whether he should more properly be "punished" or "charged".

On December 3, Harper lumped crime and drugs together in calling for minimum sentences for drug offences:

"Crime and drugs now reach places they shouldn't – our parks, our schoolyards, even our churches. Our values are under attack and we must take action to protect those values."...

He said while the Conservatives are in favour of prevention and treatment programs for drug addicts, these are "no substitutes for tough law enforcement."

Apparently the "crime" part also reached Stornoway at the time, and moved into 24 Sussex Drive shortly thereafter. But hopefully some "tough law enforcement" will indeed loom ahead to address it.

Later on in the campaign, on January 16, Harper suggested that the Cons would be proactive in dealing with internal problems rather than letting them fester:

"Let's pledge to the people of Canada, not that we will be perfect, but that we will deal with problems before they become scandals and that we will always try and do the right thing," Harper said...

"I will do everything in my power to clean up politics in Ottawa for good."

If nothing else, the Cons can get credit for creativity in defining "doing the right thing" as feigning indignance while grudgingly giving back wrongly-received donations over a year after the fact. And indeed Harper had blood on his own hands even while he pledged to clean up politics.

Not that this stopped him from closing the campaign with another declaration of the need to end the Libs' scandals:

"If the Liberals are re-elected ... we will not have any kind of direction for this country," the Conservative leader told a rally. "We will never find the money taken in the sponsorship scandal.

"The scandals, the coverups, the investigations will continue. We cannot have our country go forward like that."

In fairness, the Cons have apparently given rise to an entirely new set of investigations. But it's hard to figure that that's what Harper had in mind.

Then, two days before election day, Harper pledged to be the driving force behind the enforcement of rules in Ottawa:

Harper reiterated that if elected, his first piece of legislative action will deal with federal accountability. "I will enforce the rules," he said.

And with the campaign at a close, Harper continued that message:

Hours after winning a minority government, Conservative Leader Stephen Harper promised to get to work implementing his top campaign priorities.

"We will honour your trust, we will deliver on our commitments," Harper said to a crowd of jubliant supporters in Calgary.

To nobody's surprise, Harper's self-righteousness only increased as he took power, as highlighted with his claim as to what would set his party apart from the Libs:

Mr. Speaker, as I just said, this party, the minister and all the members of the cabinet intend to obey the law. That is what sets us apart from the Liberals.

In keeping with that position, I can only assume that Harper will soon announce that he in fact crossed the floor in 2005 without anybody noticing.

In sum, it's plain that throughout the past election campaign and ever since, Harper and his party were in violation of Canada's electoral laws in ways that fell within the culture that Harper was vowing to change. And rather than even trying to clean up their act after the fact, the Cons only admitted their wrongdoing by accident, then grudgingly tried to slip their "correction" into the news during the holidays - showing once again that from the beginning, Canada's New Government was nothing more than a hard-right version of the old one.

For added fun, the period reviewed also features Harper criticizing the Libs for refusing to extend the Access to Information Act to the Privy Council and failing to provide Saskatchewan with an equalization deal, demanding the formation of an Office of Public Prosecutions, and calling the possibility of a tax on income trusts a "a direct attack on the retirement incomes of millions of Canadians". Suffice it to say that clean government isn't the only area where PMS has happily repeated the Libs' actions which used to provoke his supposed outrage - and that ethics are far from the only reason for Canadian voters to send Harper packing from Ottawa for good at the earliest opportunity.