Top-down proceedings

As if we needed more evidence that ConAdscam is more properly traced to the Cons' central command than to individual candidates, the Globe and Mail reports that the Cons have had to cut back the list of applicants in their lawsuit against Elections Canada from 34 agents to 2 - at least in part because some applicants were named without their knowledge or consent:

The Conservative Party of Canada has removed almost all of the applicants from its lawsuit against Elections Canada as former candidates and official agents publicly disavow the advertising scheme at the heart of the legal battle.

Earlier this year, 34 Conservative supporters sued Elections Canada in a bid to get a reimbursement for advertising expenses during the 2005-06 election campaign.

But the Conservative Party whittled down the number of applicants this week to two individuals, Gerry Callaghan and David Pallet, who were, respectively, the official agents for candidates Robert Campbell and Dan Mailer.

A Conservative source said the two remaining applicants constitute "representative cases" that will be applied to the other campaigns once the matter is resolved by the courts. Still, one of the dropped applicants said she had been unaware of the lawsuit and did not want to participate in it.

Lise Vallières, who acted as the official agent for former MP Jean Landry in the Quebec riding of Richmond-Arthabaska, said yesterday she had just discovered that she was part of the initial case against Elections Canada. "Nobody ever asked anything of me," she said.

It thus seems clear that the Cons consider themselves entitled to speak for individual candidates' agents - and indeed to subject those agents to legal proceedings - based on nothing more than the assumption that they won't question the party's wishes. Which leaves all the less reason to think the Con central command would have enough respect for the autonomy of an individual campaign to even ask for any input into a plan along the lines of ConAdscam, let alone to leave the operation of the plan purely to the candidate campaigns.