A matter of interpretation

Deceivin' Stephen offers up another telling quote hinting at how dishonest the Cons continue to be about Conadscam:

Meanwhile, Harper suggested the Conservatives will continue to use the controversial "in-and-out" financing scheme that has landed the party in hot water with Elections Canada.

"Our position has been that Elections Canada has changed some of its interpretations since the election campaign - that's our problem, that's why we're in a court dispute," the prime minister said.

"But obviously we will not only abide by the letter of the law, but we will work with Elections Canada to reach a common understanding of the interpretation of the law, and that's what we will follow."

There's plenty worth unpacking within the statement. In particular, it's both comical for Harper to suggest that the Cons have worked with Elections Canada in any way, and amazingly arrogant for a government to demand that Elections Canada shift its interpretation of the law toward a "common understanding", rather than properly requiring the Cons to follow the same rules which apply to everybody.

But even leaving those factors aside, perhaps the most important message to be drawn from Harper's statement is how it undercuts another of the Cons' most tired objections to Elections Canada's investigation.

After all, it wasn't long ago that the Cons repeatedly blustered a change in the candidate manuals published in 2005 and 2007 made all the difference in determining whether advertising was national or local. On that basis, they claimed that Elections Canada was unfairly applying a new interpretation to a past election - in effect, making new rules and then applying them retroactively.

Now, that argument was largely superseded by the later developments about false invoices and central control which made the content of the Cons' ads essentially irrelevant to the picture. But in making the argument at all, surely the Cons have to be taken as having accepted first, that the candidate manual governs what candidates can legally do, and second, that candidates can reasonably be required to follow standards once they've been provided notice.

That is, until now. But Harper's statement today can only be taken as an indication that the Cons have no intention of following the 2007 manual which they once claimed to be so important. Which serves as yet another indication that neither Harper nor his party will tolerate the prospect that rules might apply to them.

Mind you, statements like Harper's may backfire in the long run. Indeed, positions like that may only force Elections Canada to cast even more scrutiny on the Cons, and serve as evidence of the Cons' mental state which may support any prosecution. But it remains to be seen whether Harper's belief that he's above the law will filter down into the public consciousness in time for the Cons to be punished in the imminent general election campaign.