Documented double standards

Impolitical discusses the latest developments in Conadscam, featuring an attempt by Elections Commissioner William Corbett to unseal millions of pages of documents to which the Cons have denied access based on a sketchy claim to solicitor-client privilege. But it's worth pointing out that the Cons' argument is far weaker than it would be if they were actually claiming that all of the documents in question were privileged:

Elections Canada is asking a judge to unseal up to a staggering five million pages of Conservative party documents tied to allegations the party broke federal election laws with a controversial advertising campaign in the 2006 election...

Elections Commissioner William Corbett and lawyers with the federal public prosecution service have asked the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to review the documents after the party claimed they contained confidential information that is protected by solicitor-client privilege...

“The investigation cannot adequately proceed because the number of documents over which privilege is claimed, and which investigators and our forensic accountants are therefore unable to review, results in potential evidence not being available to investigators,” Ronald Lamothe said in an affidavit supporting the application...

RCMP computer experts cast doubt in the affidavit on Conservative claims that it would be too onerous to review the millions of computer documents to weed out records that might be available to Elections Canada without violating privilege.

So the issue isn't that there's any plausible claim to privilege over the whole lot of documents. Instead, the Cons' argument relies on a claim that some portion of the documents might be privileged - and that since they can't be bothered to determine which ones actually are, the easier solution is instead to deprive Elections Canada of the ability to review the documents which aren't, regardless of how relevant they might be to the investigation.

Which presumably makes for an ideal outcome for the Cons. But consider how the claim would look if it were any other party making the same claim - for example, an individual under investigation for corporate fraud saying that the police can't look at a single file seized from the relevant office because some legal advice might be included.

Needless to say, under those circumstances the Cons would be the first to wail about a system which coddles criminals rather than allowing investigators to do their jobs. But as always, the same standards to be applied to everybody else are seen as far too onerous when applied to the Cons.

And that's doubly clear when one looks at another of the Cons' arguments. At the same time as they claim that it would be an undue burden to have to identify privileged documents which they've held for over three years, the Cons are also trying to make the case that Elections Canada should have been able to thoroughly review them during the course of a single-day raid. From Canwest's coverage:

Conservative party lawyers say investigators probing the financing of the 2006 election campaign seized documents outside the scope of their search warrant when they raided the party's Ottawa headquarters last spring.

Investigators working for Commissioner of Canada Elections William Corbett took away dozens of boxes of printed documents and hard drives with millions of e-mails and electronic accounting records. The seizure of material was "overbroad" and netted vast amounts of irrelevant records, the Conservatives argue.

Of course, when a party is left making such contradictory arguments, it's usually a sign that it doesn't figure that either position will get far on its own. And hopefully the latest hearing will allow Corbett to determine just who properly bears responsibility for the Cons' spending manipulations - regardless of how loudly the Cons continue to shriek that the rules shouldn't apply to them.