On central control

I wrote yesterday that Conadscam figures to have expanded in scope now that Elections Canada is investigating alleged false and misleading statements within the Cons' financial returns. But let's note as well that the core dispute about the scheme as a whole also looks to have taken a turn toward ground where the Cons are in serious trouble.

Remember that the primary point of dispute before seemed to be whether or not the advertising purchased through Conadscam should be classified as local or national. While the Cons' arguments about listing candidate names in fine print were relatively weak on their face, there's probably a relatively plausible case to be made that a local candidate could choose to pay for advertising which would focus on national leaders or issues rather than ones specific to a riding.

But the Star's coverage suggests that rather than having to rely on its interpretation as what the Cons' money was spent on, Elections Canada has also found serious problems in how the money was spent in the first place:

The people acting as the "official agents" for the Tory candidates were given precise, step-by-step instructions in how the transfer would work.

And in every case, Conservative head office first demanded that the local campaign provide bank wire instructions to ensure head office would get its money back.

"The transfer of funds to, and the withdrawal of similar amounts from, participating campaign bank accounts was entirely under the control and direction of the Conservative Fund Canada," the document states.

As a result, the Conservative Party – not the candidates – was obligated by the law to report the spending, Elections Canada says...

One official said the party has never denied its campaigns are "centrally organized... that our national campaigns and our regional organizers were the drivers for this."

All ads contained the necessary local taglines, he said.

But some candidates who agreed to go in on buying advertising time "had second thoughts," and had to be told it was "too late" to later pull out.

In other words, the money which the Cons claim to have transferred to local campaigns was never actually controlled by anybody other than the national party.

By way of analogy, let's consider what a person may - and may not - do in providing money to other people which could be used for a political contribution.

It seems obvious that if a person who has already made political contributions up to his or her donation limit gives money to another person with no strings attached, there's no particular problem if the second person chooses to use the gift to also donate to a political party. And the Cons have tried to pretend that their transfers should be seen as identical to that type of freedom to transfer money back and forth.

Before the warrant was made public, it looked like the Cons had instead given money to their riding associations with an informal expectation that it be used on the ads involved. That could easily result in some liability depending on the intention of the parties. But there would at least be some room for argument that since the recipient had some ability to determine how the money was used, the donor wouldn't necessarily be responsible for the recipient's choices - and a relatively consistent position that no side deal existed might have made it difficult to prove any wrongdoing.

Based on the warrant, however, it looks like the Cons went a step further, seeking formal wire instructions to ensure that riding associations never held any control over the money.

Now, that might have seemed to be the safer course of action if they perceived a real risk that the riding associations would rather spend it on something other than the ads involved. But it's hard to see how the Cons could successfully argue that the riding associations were the ones who spent the money involved under the Canada Elections Act when they neither supplied it, nor had any ability to choose how it would be used.

And it only gets worse when one considers what happened to those who thought better about what was being done. When candidates asked to get out of the scheme, it was the Cons' central command which informed them that they didn't have any ability to back out of the scheme.

Which only offers one more signal of just who was actually spending the money involved. And that would seem to leave the Cons with no way out regardless of whether or not the content also ran afoul of the law.