Tuesday Morning Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- Sixth Estate examines which party's candidates have violated the Canada Elections Act in recent elections. And it shouldn't be much surprise that Canada's supposed law-and-order party doesn't have much respect for either when it comes to its own campaigns:

In addition to the in-and-out fraud cases against the Conservative Party and several of its former senior officials, including two current Senators, Elections Canada has made 23 “compliance agreements” since 2006. In each case, the accused confesses to a violation of the act, usually excuses it away as inadvertent or well-intentioned or the like, and promises to make some trivial amends. In total, during the past five years 7 Conservatives, 1 NDP, 2 Liberal, and 1 unidentified party agent have signed compliance agreements.
...
Here’s a sample from the Elections Canada records:

* During the 2008 election, Winnipeg Conservative candidate Kenny Daodu’s campaign negotiated a $1000 kickback on a lease similar to the Goodyear agreement described below. Once again, there was no apparent punishment.
* Also in 2008, Conservative MP Bev Shipley and canditate Yonah Martin (now a Senator) exceeded their campaign spending limits. Their punishments: none apparent. Still in the same year, Liberal MP Blair Wilson failed to report $9000 in expenses; his punishment was “a notation… on the Elections Canada audit file” (oh, no!).
* In 2007, now-science minister Gary Goodyear’s staff confessed he had solicited an almost $2000 donation as an illegal kickback on the minister’s campaign office. His punishment: none apparent.
* One campaign agent in the 2006 election, not identified, offered gift certificates in exchange for donations. His/her punishment was to mail out a form letter advising that the gift certificates could not be provided and confirming that the donors wished to go ahead with their donation anyways.

I wish I could say all parties were equal offenders, because I did start out wanting to write a piece about politicians’ sense of entitlement. And there are offenders in every major party. But it has to be said that only Conservatives have been caught negotiating kickbacks, and they are responsible for a majority of the cases. Maybe the others are just better at covering their tracks, but given that the Conservatives are also in court for party-level electoral fraud, I do have to wonder about this party’s commitment to the rule of law.

- Lawrence Martin points out one of the Libs' old tactics that the Cons have happily taken up, as their supposed accountability watchdogs have proven to be utterly useless:

The Conservatives have learned well. Remember in the old days when they used to holler about the performance of Jean Chrétien’s ethics counsellor, Howard Wilson. Watchdog Wilson, they charged, was a great boon to the Liberals. Present him with allegations of wrongdoing, they said, and inevitably he would find no evidence of wrongdoing.

But if the Conservatives thought he was a soft touch, they might want to check the record of their own ethics commissioner, watchkitten Mary Dawson. In four years on the job, working with inadequate legislation, her pursuit of malfeasance has been so relentless and unyielding that on only two occasions has she found that a politician violated ethical standards. That’s from a caseload of allegations numbering in the hundreds.Of the two cases her merciless team of investigators moved on, neither reflected poorly on the government. One was against a Liberal MP. Another was a decision last week against former Conservative MP Helena Guergis for using her position to further the business interests of her husband, Rahim Jaffer. The verdict tended to vindicate Prime Minister Stephen Harper for his decision to dump Ms. Guergis from caucus last year.
...
Ms. Ouimet’s work was such that even former auditor-general Sheila Fraser, who witnessed a lot over the years, was aghast. More than 200 allegations from whistleblowers came before Ms. Ouimet’s office. Nary a one led to redressal. Ms. Ouimet was pilloried in an A-G’s report and left the government with a $500,000 payout and a gag order not to talk about what she did.

What she did could hardly have displeased the governing party. Of the hundreds of cases handled by her, who knows how many might have constituted breaches of the public trust. Not to be forgotten is the work of another officer of Parliament, Karen Shepherd, the commissioner of lobbying. Her less than avid record of enforcement must bring smiles to many politicos as well.

- All of which works extremely well for a government which is obviously more focused on perception than reality. Though from the first link, Campbell Clark nicely calls out the Cons' self-glorification:

The (Canadian Tourism Commission), funded with $95-million a year in federal money, is an arms-length body with a board of directors and a mandate to promote Canadian tourism. Their mandate does not specifically include promotion of the minister.

- The CCPA highlights income disparities for each Canadian province in slideshow form.

- Finally, Alison weighs in on the connections between the TILMA (now being spread across Canada under the guise of the Agreement on Internal Trade) and the CETA.