Tuesday Afternoon Links

This and that for your Tuesday reading.

- In the latest on Robocon, John Ivison rightly notes that the scandal figures to give many Canadians a long-overdue first look at the Cons' computerized voter information. Meanwhile, Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher note that the Cons' spending in last year's election campaign is coming under scrutiny - and at least one newly-elected MP is running into serious trouble while others wonder whether they'll keep their jobs. Kady notes that at least one party ignored Elections Canada's admonition to use lists of updated polls for internal purposes only. Gloria Galloway is only one of many to point out the stunning double standard as the Cons demand the release of Lib calling information while obstinately refusing to provide anything of the sort themselves. Dr. Dawg documents the Cons' distraction tactics, while Alison shreds a few of the more laughable excuses.

- Meanwhile, Lawrence Martin earns a bullet point of his own for pairing a chronicle of Stephen Harper's seething hatred for Elections Canada with this contrast between Harper's one-time words and his government's actions:

Mr. Harper’s words have a rather peculiar ring today. Elections Canada bureaucrats went after Mr. Bryan, he said in his letter, “to establish the precedent of government control of the Internet. … The implications are very ominous, very scary.” And yet, his own government recently tried to introduce Internet surveillance legislation, only to be thwarted by a public backlash.

“Iron-fisted bully tactics have no place in a free and democratic society,” Mr. Harper wrote, in reference to Mr. Kingsley. “Information is power. The less control the government has over the flow of information, the less control it can exert over its citizens. … We cannot allow the government to dictate what information we can and cannot publish.”

Ironically, on information flows, the Harper government is widely viewed as one of Canada’s most restrictive. Just last week, the journal Nature accused the government of muzzling the science community.

The battles against gag laws by Mr. Harper, who recently lifted the law on the broadcasting of election results, cost the Citizens Coalition more than $1-million in legal fees. In respect to the “in and out” scheme, the RCMP raided Conservative offices in 2008, and the party sued Elections Canada. Ultimately, the party pleaded guilty to overspending during the 2006 campaign.

In his 2001 letter, Mr. Harper accused Elections Canada of being “out of control.” The question today, as the robo-call scandal continues, is whether it’s his own party members who are out of control.

- But far be it from the Cons to let a good scandal go to waste - as they've finally conceded defeat on Conadscam while the media is focused elsewhere.

- Finally, as the federal budget approaches, Jim Flaherty wants to make sure that any budget slashing doesn't affect free toys for rich people. And the Cons are pouring millions of dollars into trying to attack public servants in the name of cost efficiency.

Thursday Evening Links

This and that for your Thursday reading.

- In the last couple of days' worth of developments on Robocon, the Cons defaulted to their standard setting of admitting nothing and misleading about everything - though it's hard to see that strategy working out well given the amount of information that's already coming to light. Dan Arnold and Michael Harris considered the necessary ingredients to make the electoral fraud into a lasting scandal. Trish Hennessy ran some numbers on vote suppression. Andrew Coyne lamented the state of Canada's institutional accountability, while Chantal Hebert hopes Elections Canada can get to the bottom of the fraud. While the Cons' latest spin is that their national party (which is of course already an admitted electoral cheater) had nothing to do with the scheme, Harold Albrecht has already acknowledged otherwise when it came to false calls in his own riding. And Sixth Estate identifies the various parts of the Cons' vote suppression organization while rightly suggesting that we focus on full disclosure and investigation rather than getting caught up the prospect of by-elections.

- Meanwhile, Helene Buzzetti exposes a new incarnation of Conadscam, as Quebec ridings once again plowed tens of thousands of dollars of claimed election spending into they-can't-explain-what in an apparent effort to shift expenses down from the national level.

- Barbara Yaffe compares the Cons' no-price-is-too-high attitude toward prison spending with their miserly attitude toward Canadian seniors. Which is surely the kind of unflattering comparison the Cons want to shut down by hiding the books from Parliament and the public alike.

- If we were lacking for reasons to doubt the spin of corporate tax-slashers, Erin provides them with a particular focus on an attempt to keep racing to the bottom ahead of the United States.

- Finally, the main difference between Richard Evans and a good chunk of the right-wing noise machine is that he's foolish enough to connect the dots in combining eliminationist rhetoric with hatred for anybody who isn't in the tank for the oil industry. But it's well worth highlighting just what happens when the dirty truth manages to seep out.

Parliament in Review: November 17, 2011

Thursday, November 17 saw a Liberal opposition day turned into a discussion about the sad state of water supplies to Canada's First Nations. But while all parties were able to support the motion, there was plenty of room for contrast as to who was most interested in dealing with the desperate need for improvement.

The Big Issue

Bob Rae's motion ended up being debated and agreed to in the following form (following an amendment to substitute "forthwith" for the oddly-delayed "no later than spring 2012":

That the House call on the Government of Canada to address on an urgent basis the needs of those First Nations communities whose members have no access to clean, running water in their homes; that action to address this disparity begin forthwith; and that the House further recognize that the absence of this basic requirement represents a continuing affront to our sense of justice and fairness as Canadians.

Charlie Angus noted the gap between stringent water standards off reserve and nonexistent ones for First Nations, and lamented the apparent view of some that First Nations citizens could be treated as non-entities. Kevin Lamoureux expanded on the latter point by noting the need to set expectations for standards of living that should be available to all citizens, while Jinny Sims more concisely questioned Greg Rickford about the need to recognize and act on a right to water and Elizabeth May decried third-world conditions in Canada. John Duncan responded to repeated musings about the need for federal cooperation with the Manitoba NDP government's desire for a cooperative program by saying he'd be more than willing to participate in one, and acknowledged the reasonableness of Angus' request to ensure that a single fire didn't leave 90 of Attawapiskat's residents (currently sharing a trailer) literally out in the cold. But Jonathan Tremblay rightly noted that anything to end the hardships facing First Nations looks to be at the bottom of the Cons' list of priorities.

Meanwhile, having introduced a motion and made an initial speech which in no way mentioned First Nations self-governance, Rae questioned the lack of discussion of that side of the issue; presumably he was then relieved by Linda Duncan's thorough review of the point. Similarly, Jonathan Genest-Jourdain presented a strong analysis of the disconnect between the community values of First Nations and Canada's interest-based political system. Duncan noted that the Cons had (however reluctantly) committed to end all forms of discrimination against aboriginal Canadians through the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe's question about how matters had gotten worse in the last five years was met with a disturbing response from David Wilks that the Cons plan to continue down their current road.

Unmasked

Meanwhile, the one piece of legislation debated on the day was Blake Richards' bill to create a separate offence for wearing a mask or disguise while participating in a riot or illegal assembly. Richards made clear that his purpose was to force people participating in any mass events to make their identities known:

What if there were a measure designed to strip away anonymity from criminals during such disturbances? What if the very act of wearing a disguise in a riot became in and of itself an offence? What if police had the means to order those who were concealing their identities in a riot to remove their disguises or risk detainment or arrest? That would change the stakes dramatically.

People would then have a very clear choice in front of them. They could choose to remove their disguise, show their face and be identified and held accountable for their criminal actions, or they could choose not to and risk arrest for the offence of wearing a mask in a riot.

Charmaine Bord replied by pointing out that the bill is redundant when it comes to anybody who actually commits a crime (such that the offence applies only to spectators or others merely at the scene of an assembly), and that any legislator interested in civil liberties should be concerned about imposing additional obligations that don't serve a useful purpose. Sean Casey spoke more generally about the Cons' obsession with stoking public fear. And Jack Harris suggested that the Cons actually get acquainted with the Criminal Code before weighing it down with more useless amendments - though Randy Hoback's heckle made it clear that at least some Cons won't be reading anything other than their talking points anytime soon.

In Brief

Nycole Turmel and Wayne Marston called on the Cons to stop insisting that Canadians play retirement roulette with private retirement funds. Jamie Nicholls took a look back at one of his predecessors as MP for Vaudreuil-Soulanges, Louis-René Beaudoin - whose political career ended over a single instance of the type of stifled debate that's become commonplace under the Harper Cons. Duncan called for additional parental leave for parents of premature infants. Eve Peclet listed a few of the Con cabinet ministers still sitting on money wrongly paid to them as a result of Conadscam. Wayne Easter and Malcolm Allen both criticized the Cons' move to take hundreds of millions of dollars out of the hands of farmers to support their new, undemocratic, non-single-desk Wheat Board. Angus again tested whether the Cons are capable of shame when it comes to Dean Del Mastro's attacks on judicial independence, and again James Moore confirmed otherwise. Linda Duncan asked whether the privacy rights of an advocate for aboriginal children had been violated repeatedly by federal officials. Andrew Scheer ruled on a point of order related to the Cons' proud invocation of an individual's donations to the Liberals as disqualifying any criticism of the government, concluding with this reminder:

It is these wise cautionary remarks that have prompted me to use this occasion to remind all hon. members to use great care when referring to or singling out an individual who does not have a voice here in this House and to avoid circumstances when, by such reference, an individual could have his or her reputation damaged without having the opportunity to respond.

And finally, Tarek Brahmi questioned the Cons about consumer debt, only to be told by Shelly Glover that free money for people with $10,000 per year to sock away should be plenty of comfort for Canadians drowning in debt.

Sunday Morning Links

This and that for your Sunday reading.

- Emily Dee takes a first look at what may be a highly important story about the Cons' use of the notorious right-wing push-poller Responsive Media Group:

I had been conducting some research into the last federal election campaign, which was probably the most bizarre on record.

Many of the strange occurrences, especially the phone calls, could all be matched to similar strategies used by Karl Rove and company.
...
I then looked at the first few ridings where those prank phone calls took place and examined the Conservative candidate's financial reports and darn if they all didn't have a similar entry for RMG, most for the same amount of $15,000.00

If they were conducting phone surveys, why would it cost Block, in a riding of 69,547; the same amount as Peter Braid of Kitchener-Waterloo with 126,742?

Or Rodney Weston of Saint John, population 82,078, the same as Marty Burke running in Guelph, with 114,943?

Or Tilly Oneill-Gordon of Miramachi with 53,844, the same as John Carmichael of Don Valley West with 117,083?

The "In and Out" immediately came to mind. Was this actually an expenditure of the national campaign, broken up into smaller invoices so they could again spend more than the legal limit? And remember by passing these expenses off to local campaigns, the candidates are eligible for rebates from Elections Canada on behalf of Canadian citizens. Our money.

I spent several hours yesterday combing reports and found 66 Conservatives claiming amounts paid to RMG, totalling almost a million dollars. So far everything is speculative, but it's amazing how well it fits with earlier research.

- Gary Mason profiles Leadnow as one of the key voices of Canada's emerging progressive movement, while Sixth Estate documents a few of the funders of right-wing causes who figure to put roadblocks in the way of change at every possible turn.

- Thomas Walkom points out a couple of key myths in our health care debate:

First, medicare isn’t about to be bankrupted by the elderly. That’s a common misconception, spurred by the fact that baby boomers — those born between 1946 and 1964 — are nearing retirement.

In both political and media arenas, this particular myth is treated as unshakeable truth, creating fears that doddering boomers will monopolize virtually all health-care dollars.

But as figures released this month by the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) demonstrate, such fears are grossly exaggerated.

The government-funded agency calculates that the aging population has only a “modest” effect on medicare spending — in large part because, thanks to social programs like old age security, Canadians over 65 are healthier than they used to be.
...
Second, medicare costs in general aren’t spinning out of control.

This is an even more pervasive media myth, spurred on by doomsayers who argue that health-care spending, if unchecked, will soon consume entire provincial budgets.

In part, this misconception results from the fallacy of extrapolation — the assumption that past trends must inevitably continue.

It reminds me of a prediction, made before the invention of the rotary dial phone, that by 1960 all North American women would be working as switchboard operators.

That turned out to be false. As physician and consultant Michael Rachlis pointed out in this newspaper, so has the myth of the voracious health budget.

- But of course, the privatizers always have new myths waiting to replace the ones which are debunked - and on that front, the push for privatized health care in Saskatchewan and elsewhere has often been justified by a supposed focus on the needs of patients or users of the system. Which means that it's well worth considering whether corporate care actually makes matters worse on that front.

And it shouldn't come as much surprise that in a direct comparison, for-profit care homes generate significantly more resident complaints than public and non-profit counterparts.

Saturday Morning Links

Assorted content for your weekend reading.

- Stephanie Larocque highlights the Cons' gall in hanging onto federal reimbursements from their own ad scam even after having admitted their guilt:

You don't have to prove guilt when the charged plead guilty. And that is exactly what happened last week when the Conservative Party entered into an agreement in Ottawa where they would plead guilty to overspending and pay the maximum fine allowable under the Canada Elections Act if the charges were dropped against their senior members.

One might think that pleading guilty to attempting to circumvent the rules that manage our democracy would be done with an air of regret or remorse. When it comes to the Conservatives, however, you would be wrong. Instead, Conservative spokesman Fred DeLorey issued a statement claiming the plea bargain was "a big victory'' for the party in its five-year "administrative dispute'' with Elections Canada over the legality of the in-and-out scheme. "Every single Conservative accused of wrongdoing has been cleared today,'' DeLorey said.

I don't think anyone has ever looked a an agreement that admits guilt as ever clearing anyone of wrongdoing. The notion is ludicrous. The coordinated overspending done by funneling funds through 67 ridings just happened spontaneously? No, the Conservatives accused of wrongdoing were only spared the embarrassment of having their involvement in the scheme dissected in open court rather than being cleared of anything.
...
Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey responded that "The question of reimbursements will be dealt with in the ongoing civil proceedings." referring to the civil case the Tories brought against Elections Canada in which they dispute Elections Canada's ability to refuse to reimburse expense claims.

In other words, guilt not just without remorse, without apology, and without even having the decency to immediately repay funds improperly received from the taxpayers that they have already admitted were the result of a scheme to overspend their limits. Indeed, should they win the civil case they would compel Elections Canada to reimburse the outstanding expense claims which they have already agreed were illegal. The nerve of this position is staggering. They admit wrongdoing yet continue to seek a means of profiting from that wrongdoing, trying to have excessive refunds that were requested with fraudulent receipts taken from your tax dollars.

- pogge blasts Ontario's McGuinty Libs for decreeing that any deficit reduction will be accomplished solely through service cuts rather than even the most obviously needed tax increases.

- Mike DeSouza reports on Greenpeace's expose of multi-billion-dollar corporate lobbying against action on climate change.

- Tim Naumetz points out that even as the Cons claim to be retaining a meaningful gun licensing regime, their bill to torch the long gun registry also includes provisions to make it impossible to enforced the individual licensing rules.

- Finally, the Calgary Herald editorial board lists its home city as one of the areas which has been poorly served by utterly useless Con MPs over the past decade. And it's well worth using the attention of the NDP's national leadership campaign to change the part of the story which laments the lack of a viable alternative.

Wednesday Morning Links

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Frances Russell laments Stephen Harper's determination to replace democracy with court rule:

Pierre Trudeau started it. Stephen Harper is finishing it off.

The "it" is the effective demise of parliamentary democracy and the installation of "court government" ruled by an all-powerful prime minister and his hand-picked, unelected, unaccountable "courtiers."

Fiercely partisan, these "courtiers," like their medieval predecessors, have only one purpose: to protect, advance and polish the image of the "king" -- the prime minister.

Not only are formal and traceable lines of policy-making and accountability gone, but parliamentary government has been turned on its head. The prime minister doesn't account to Parliament; Parliament accounts to -- serves -- the prime minister.
...
There are other, more egregious examples: routine in-camera motions muzzling parliamentary committees and their opposition members, routine closure motions introduced simultaneously with all legislation.

But, Wiseman says, the prime minister's most dangerous undermining of Parliament to date was former governor general Michaëlle Jean's decision to grant Harper prorogation in December 2008 to stave off parliamentary defeat.

"Canada's Parliament," according to the director of the Constitution Unit at University College, London, "is more dysfunctional than any of the other Westminster parliaments," he continues. "No prime minister in any Commonwealth country with a governor general, until Harper, has ever sought prorogation to avoid a vote of confidence. Only in Canada has a government secured the prorogation of Parliament to save itself from political defeat and only in Canada has the governor general been party to it."

- Glen McGregor rightly asks whether the Cons will repay riding-level reimbursements affected by their in-and-out guilty plea. And it's hard to see how they could escape that consequence when - as I noted here - they've admitted as a party that the scheme resulted in riding associations claiming those expenses without ever paying a dime.

- Allen Thompson points out that the Cons' immigration clampdown is based on trying to set a reduced value on parents and grandparents. But the most striking change is the fact that the value of extended family has effectively been set at zero for the time being, thanks to the Cons' refusal to allow any new applications.

- Finally, Kim MacRael reports on the Cons' latest gratuitous dumb-on-crime posturing which figures to deliberately make Canada's criminal justice system less effective:

Prisoners who are placed in segregation as a form of punishment could also be denied visits from family and friends under the federal anti-crime bill, a measure the Canadian Bar Association calls “mean-spirited” and counterproductive.
...
The bill proposes fundamental changes to the way inmates are treated behind prison walls, including the elimination of a rule requiring administrators to impose the least restrictive measures necessary on prisoners. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews told the committee this fall the changes are based on recommendations from guards and would “modernize the system of discipline in federal penitentiaries.”

Under the legislation, administrators could limit visits to those being punished with solitary confinement for up to 30 days at a time.

Michael Jackson, a member of the Canadian Bar Association’s committee on imprisonment and release, said the plan runs counter to research on prisoner behaviour. “Segregation tends to ratchet up prisoners’ anger and makes them more difficult to control, [and] allowing visitors is one way of trying to alleviate it,” he said.

Mr. Jackson pointed to a 2008 study from Florida State University researchers that found prisoners who were visited by family and friends were less likely to reoffend. “To say we’re going to toughen up conditions by taking away visits is very mean-spirited and it doesn’t make correctional sense,” he said.

On agreed facts

Most of the commentary on the Cons' publicly-admitted law-breaking has focused on the mere guilty plea itself. (And I'll point to Sixth Estate's post as deserving of a look.) But the agreed statement of facts - which the Cons have equally admitted as true in the process of pleading guilty - tells a far better story than either the plea alone or the (unfortunately) minimal punishment.

After years of denials, the Cons have publicly acknowledged:

- that they allocated expenses to candidate campaigns which not only didn't agree to the arrangement, but weren't even capable of doing so:

The advertising expenses had previously been booked as part of the Party’s national advertising campaign. A number of local campaigns committed to the media buy transfer; however, a number of commitments received and acted upon by Donison were in respect of ridings where no candidate or Official Agent had yet been chosen or confirmed for the riding.
...
Ridings in media market areas in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, in which little or no local or regional media broadcast contracts had been bought for Party advertising, were not accepted as participants in the media buy transfers. Donison later explained this omission to Don Plett, President of the Party National Council. Donison explained the omission of four (4) Manitoba ridings, as being due to the fact that “"we were in the hands of the ad people who had already made the market commitments on Day 1 of the campaign before we decided to do this""."”

- that they persuaded candidate campaigns to participate with the promise of free rebates for money not actually spent:

The selling points used to persuade local campaigns to participate in the media buy were that it was without cost to the local campaigns, because the Fund would be providing the monies, and the promise that the media buy ‘expense’ to the local campaign would be eligible for the 60% rebate of paid election expenses from Elections Canada.

- that the Cons' advertiser fabricated paperwork after the fact to pretend that ad buys originated with candidates' campaigns, even as it continued to operate based on the instructions of the central campaign:

On December 9, RMI rebooked the existing advertising contracts with broadcasters under a new RMI client name, which RMI called “"the Official Agents for Conservative Party candidates"” by means of a standardized email to media outlets. This message identified RMI as the purchasing agent for the Party. Each message said that they needed to “"shift dollars"” from the Party to “"the Official Agents for Conservative Party candidates"”. No specific candidates or ridings were identified. RMI noted that “"(t)his in no way changes the overall commitment we as agents have made on behalf of our clients."” RMI then specified that either “"all weight"” or specified dollar amounts of the “"current bookings"” were to be transferred from Party to the “"new advertiser name"”.
...
When effecting the switch of advertising on December 9, RMI insisted that it was unwilling to deal with each local campaign which would be participating in this regional media buy program. It insisted that all media buys on behalf of candidates pursuant to this program be invoiced to the Party and paid by the Party. RMI received instructions regarding the switching of advertising and payment exclusively from the Party and the Fund.

- that the Cons themselves then manipulated their own numbers to make candidates' contributions match available cap room, rather than corresponding in any way to what any candidate received:

The invoiced media costs were for the media costs as allocated by RMI, or as apportioned by the Party and the Fund for campaigns sharing regional media markets. In two cases in Quebec, Kehoe reduced the invoice costs from RMI amounts to avoid campaigns going over their spending limit. The amounts that could not be invoiced as first planned were then distributed as increased costs to the remaining campaigns.

- and finally, that the Conservative Party and Conservative Fund of Canada both illegally failed to report campaign expenses, including not just the disputed advertising funds but also office expenses - resulting in the Cons overspending their campaign limit:

However, the Party and the Fund admit only that the costs of advertising, including Quebec advertising production costs, that the Fund ought to have reported to Elections Canada, but did not, totalled $9,737,722.11, rather than the $9,174,392.60 that was reported. Thus the Party and Fund admit that the cost of the advertising expenses not reported was $563,329.51.
The cost of the office expenses for the Party offices in Montreal and Quebec City not reported by the Fund in its election expense return of the Party’s national election expenses was $116,250. Thus the Party and the Fund admit that the total amount of expenses that the Fund failed to report to Elections Canada was $679,579.51.
...
Thus the Party and the Fund admit to spending $420,480.15 over the statutory spending limit.

Needless to say, the above admissions go far beyond the Cons' spin about mere administrative technicalities (while looking at the amount of the fine alone largely misses that point). And it's well worth making sure to tell the whole story as to the deception and manipulation which the Cons have now publicly admitted to make sure the Cons face appropriate consequences from the public - rather than seeing the whole dispute as being over the penalty, and making it all the more likely that the Cons will pay no further price for their electoral law-breaking.

[Edit: fixed wording.]

Everything wrong with Canadian politics in a nutshell

The Conservative Party of Canada admits to breaking the law, and describes it as a victory.

Sunday Afternoon Links

Content goes here.

- Pay no attention to mere pesky Nobel laureates with their baseless concern about Canada's consumer debt levels and housing prices. As long as Stephen Harper is sitting at a desk feigning concern, what could possibly go wrong with Canada's economy?

- Meanwhile, the Star tears into Harper over his party's contempt for Canada's election laws:

The Conservatives only invite more scorn by persisting with their threadbare claim that they are the victims of an “administrative dispute” and differences over “interpretations” of the law. As Liberal Dominic LeBlanc slyly noted in Parliament, “Mr. Speaker, there will be a lot of people in federal prisons tonight who will think they had an ‘administrative disagreement’ with the federal government.”

A party that campaigned to restore ethical governance cannot be comfortable being likened to criminals in denial, with election speculation in the air. Harper would do better to cut his losses, bow to Elections Canada’s better judgment, and accept responsibility for a sad chapter in the party’s history. This just gets worse.

- In case anybody was operating under the illusion that the Cons' Senate interference with the will of elected MPs was a one-time problem, no such luck:

Supporters are now optimistic the bill will pass when it comes to a vote Wednesday. The New Democrats and Bloc Québécois are solidly in favour, as are most Liberals and even a handful of Conservatives.

That doesn’t mean it will become law, however. MP Glen Pearson, the Liberal critic for international co-operation, says Conservatives have told him it will be killed in the government-controlled Senate. It could also die if there’s an early election.

But that should serve as reason to turf the Cons as soon as possible - since the longer they have to stack the Senate, the more time it will take for any alternative government to be able to actually pass legislation.

- Finally, great news out of my home riding of Wascana, as U of R professor Marc Spooner has put his name forward as the NDP's candidate for the next federal election. There's plenty of work to be done in both winning over votes which currently default to Ralph Goodale and working to boost turnout in parts of the riding which see woeful participation at all levels of government, but Spooner's profile and focus on housing issues should make him an ideal candidate for the effort.

Deep thought

"Yeah, but at least we didn't take kickbacks!!!" was a nice Con talking point while it lasted. I look forward to the transition to "Yeah, but we're no worse than the Libs were!".

On prior knowledge

From Jennifer Ditchburn's story on the Cons' conscientious objectors to the in-and-out scheme, a reminder that one of their supposed law and order stalwarts knew all too well the dangers of similar ruses:

Mark's former campaign manager, Debby Sorochynski, said she recalls being asked to receive money and then have the funds withdrawn quickly afterward.

Sorochynski said she remembers the issue because it sounded similar to a case involving Conservative cabinet minister Vic Toews, who pleaded guilty and was convicted of electoral overspending in a Manitoba provincial election.
Three other candidates in that election were also convicted of the breach of electoral laws.

The provincial Progressive Conservative party had asked candidates shortly before the 1999 election to sign an authorization to absorb $7,500 each in central campaign expenses, according to the Winnipeg Free Press' account of court testimony. Toews' lawyer said at the time that Toews initially did not want to participate in the plan.

"That was a well-known, documented story in Manitoba, so when the national office offered an opportunity to get involved in something that sounded similar to that, we just said No," said Sorochynski.

So what does it say about the Cons' central command that its apparent source of ideas for campaign management came from a scheme that managed to get a prominent Con (among others) convicted of breaching the law at the provincial level?

Of kingpins and pawns

Somehow the reporting on Doug Finley's Twitter outburst has missed a rather remarkable point. So let's note that senior Cons seem to be following up with their new strategy of unveiling policy on Twitter by now using it to undermine their own legal position.

After all, Finley is personally facing charges arising out of the in-and-out scandal. And presumably, one of his defences would seem to have been that he personally wasn't responsible for the shifted costs and fabricated receipts forming part of the scheme - particularly since he didn't play a direct role in the transactions on the public record.

However, it wouldn't make any sense for Finley to say personally and publicly that Harper wasn't in a position to know about the decision-making process surrounding the in-and-out transactions unless he had enough personal involvement to know what did and didn't filter up to Harper. So Finley may have managed to substantially undermine his own defence in under 140 characters.

But does that make Finley's tweet credible in its exculpation of Harper? Let's revisit the Cons' governing philosophy per Paul Wells and John Geddes:

Someone who was there paraphrased Harper’s message to his ministers at his first cabinet meeting in 2006: “I am the kingpin. So whatever you do around me, you have to know that I am sacrosanct.” Harper was telling his ministers that they were expendable but that he wasn’t. If they had to go so that his credibility and his ability to get things done were protected, so be it.

So what implications might that philosophy have for Finley - a Harper loyalist since long before the Cons took power, who presumably had a role in building Harper's own internal message?

To the extent Finley believed his party's own hype, it would seem as likely as not that he'd be willing to throw himself under a modest-sized bus for the sake of protecting the kingpin. And that means there's reason to call the attempt to insulate Harper into question - even as it serves as substantial evidence against Finley himself.

Update: Leftdog has more.

Wednesday Morning Links

Content goes here.

- Lest there be any doubt, the Federal Court of Appeal's decision strongly rejecting the Cons' arguments about rebates isn't any more conclusive of the individual charges against four key Con insiders than the ruling below. But the fact that Elections' Canada's interpretation of the law it's in charge of enforcing has been found to be correct is still a rather important development - particularly since there's no general right of appeal unless the Supreme Court of Canada chooses to grant leave (which is does only in a small fraction of cases).

- Scott Payne's contribution to Aaron Wherry's series on the current state of the House of Commons is well worth a read. But I'd argue that his general metaphor is part of the problem: while politics are too often seen as a matter of merely hooking in votes on a one-time basis, the true measure of success should be to get people to want to be involved more generally.

- Having already duly mocked Lorne Gunter's inane column on the Senate, let's note that Chantal Hebert's more reasonable analysis still looks to be somewhat off base.

Of course, nobody will dispute the point that abolition figures to be a difficult process. But I'd argue (as the NDP seems to be doing) that the experience of Canada's previous failed attempts at constitutional reform should be taken as a signal that there's more chance of success in seeking a popular mandate on specific issues, rather than trying to cobble together a full constitutional package through complex negotiations with ever-changing parties.

And it's also worth noting that Stephen Harper used to agree on abolition as an alternative (with no such criticism from the likes of Hebert) - that is, until he stacked the upper chamber with enough of his cronies to be able to override the will of Canada's elected representatives.

- Finally, let's start working on the backlog of developments in the potash sector with this observation from Erin:

PotashCorp paid zero Potash Production Tax in 2010. In other words, the company is swimming in writeoffs and had no taxable profits according to Saskatchewan’s profit-tax formula.

The company’s entire $77-million royalty payment was the provincial resource surcharge, set at 3% of sales.
...
PotashCorp’s 2010 Canadian income tax expense of $333 million comprises about $200 million to Ottawa and $133 million to provincial governments. Because the company also operates in other provinces, Saskatchewan is probably getting less than $133 million.

Meanwhile, PotashCorp is paying $113 million of corporate income tax in Trinidad, where it has a nitrogen facility. In the previous year, 2009, it actually paid more corporate tax to Trinidad than to all levels of Canadian government!

Conservatives. Illegal Activity. Repeat.

Kudos to the Director of Public Prosecutions for setting the record straight that yes, two of Stephen Harper's hand-picked Senate appointees are accused of illegal activity. Anybody taking bets on how long it'll be before we hear that when the future government does it, it's retroactively not illegal?

From day one

I don't yet have much to add to the CP's coverage and associated Pundits' Guide posts about the latest area where the Cons' 2006 election return is being challenged.

But it's pointing out that based on the revelations not surfacing until now, the details of how Harper and company won power nearly five years ago are just now trickling out even where they relate to publicly-available returns, with the Cons fighting every step of the way. And that combination of the delay in the truth coming out and the Cons desperately trying to suppress it should leave little reason for confidence about what's happened during the time they've been in power.

Thursday Morning Links

- If there's anything surprising about the latest federal fund-raising numbers, it's how little has changed over the past few years. While the Cons are hopefully seeing a drop in their receipts over the past couple of months, there seems to be little indication that any party's fund-raising capacity has changed meaningfully since the Cons took power - which is particularly telling for a Lib party which perpetually seems to be almost ready to adapt to a grassroots-based fund-raising model.

- The New Brunswick NDP looks to be doing an excellent job focusing public attention on both the Libs and Cons in that province for a stunningly slimy move to pass an increase to MLA salaries and pensions (among a pile of other legislation) at a time when a flood prevented any recording of the goings-on in the legislature.

But if I have any criticism of the NDP's strategy, it's that the party's sights are set so low in what may be its most visible issue campaign. After all, while it's true that it would only have taken one NDP MLA to keep bills from being forced through, surely it's for the best to elect many more MLAs who won't be inclined to play along with such abuse of democratic procedure - and with the NDP's polling numbers in the mid to high teens, there would seem to be a strong chance of doing just that.

- David Eaves' takedown of Stephen Taylor and other Con spokesflacks is well worth a read:

(F)or Conservatives the whole reason for getting rid of the census was that it was supposed to curtail big government. Stephen Taylor - Conservative blogger and cheerleader - says as much in his National Post Column. The beginning of the end of the Canadian welfare state. What was his line? "If it can’t be measured, future governments can’t pander." It took about 9 days to disprove that thesis. A $5.1-billion dollar a year increase to create prison capacity for a falling crime rate is the case in point. Turns out even if you can't measure it you can still do something about it. Just badly.

This isn't the end of big government. It isn't even the end of pandering governments. It's just the beginning of blind government.

- Meanwhile, QMI is predictably carrying the Cons' water on the census issue like to many others, push polling about how respondents would treat "questions that you considered to be very personal and embarrassing" without pointing to any evidence that such questions exist. So let's make it clear: if there were any questions on the long form whose embarrassment factor could possibly jeopardize the results, the Cons wouldn't have had to fabricate them.

- Finally, PostMedia reports that while the Cons' vandalism in government isn't the kind that can be prosecuted, their electoral book-cooking may yet result in charges.

The bill comes due

The inevitable consequences of Conadscam (remember that?) are just now starting to materialize. And not surprisingly, the Cons are panicking at the realization of what they've wrought by making up their worst excuses yet. Shorter Cons now that several of their cabinet ministers are in danger of being prosecuted:

As a matter of free speech, we're entitled to make up whatever numbers we want in reporting our electoral expenses.

The reviews are in

The Star-Phoenix editorial board on yesterday's Conadscam ruling:

Justice Luc Martineau boiled the complicated "regional media buy (RMB)" scheme down to whether the candidates voluntarily agreed to participate and if they did, in fact, incur the expenses themselves.

If such ads that promote the party and leader are interpreted as justified for helping the candidate at the constituency level, it only furthers public sentiment that local MPs are mostly empty vessels who are filled up by the party machine and their leader once they get to Ottawa.
...
The effect, of course, is to render party campaign spending limits almost irrelevant. Even when the court accepts that the tab for what's essentially a national advertisement to promote the party and leader was picked up by the party itself, if the candidate agrees to give up a portion of his spending room to accommodate it, everything's fine, one infers. The taxpayer is on the hook for reimbursement of a portion of these costs.

In an era of ever-growing evidence of tight control over individual MPs by party leaders, is there any question whether candidates wouldn't agree "to incur these expenses themselves" if they are asked?
...
If Elections Canada won't appeal this decision, as it should, it's up to parliamentarians to do what the judge suggests is their job. The odds of that happening in today's House are all but nil. To let this decision stand ill-serves Canada's electoral process.

Not so sweeping

There's no doubt that the Cons will be breathing at least somewhat of a sigh of relief in the wake of today's decision on Conadscam. But before anybody gets carried away in declaring the decison an absolute victory for the Cons, let's take a closer look at what was actually decided.

On my reading, the biggest win for the Cons comes from para. 217, where the general idea behind the in-and-out scheme was effectively held to be lawful:

(I)t was perfectly lawful for the Party to put a condition on the use of any sum of money that would be transferred to a local campaign. It was up to the campaign to accept or refuse such condition, just as it was up to the campaign to accept to participate in a regional media buy organized by the Party.

That finding effectively cuts to the core of the largest area of dispute surrounding Conadscam, representing a judicial declaration that a riding association doesn't ever have to have control over money in order to validly claim to have spent it. And to the extent it doesn't get overturned on an appeal, it effectively permits the Cons to run some form of a similar scheme in future elections.

But that isn't the end of the story by any means.

First, it's worth noting that as much as the Cons would like to pretend that the decision serves as a "test case" for all 67 of the candidates whose returns hadn't been accepted by Elections Canada, the reality is that Martineau J.'s decision makes specific mention of some factors which might make it inapplicable to other candidates.

For example, para. 214 includes a specific mention that for the returns before the court, no ads started running until after the candidate's agent had approved their expense, while para. 213 and 221 point out that there isn't any question that the documents for the two agents before the court were faked or forged. Where those factors are different for a particular agent, there may still be reason for the Chief Electoral Officer to reach a difference conclusion. Moreover, much of Martineau J.'s analysis deals with a lack of reasons by the Chief Electoral Officer, suggesting that some valid grounds may exist to reject returns in the future.

More significantly for the Cons, though, Martineau J. also rejected one key component of their scheme in the form of the attempt to argue that the party and the agents involved could allocated the "commercial value" of advertising as they saw fit. See para. 236-237:

The (Cons') allocation of the broadcasting costs for the three participating campaigns in the Halifax area is not logical and does not reflect the fact that the three ridings benefited equally from the impugned ads. The Halifax West riding ends up paying much more than the Halifax and Dartmouth ridings. The allocation in this case has to be made taking into consideration the equal participation by the ridings in the total buy arranged by RMI. The actual allocation is below the commercial value in the case of the Halifax and Dartmouth ridings, and above the commercial value in the case of the Halifax West riding.

The fact that the amounts charged by the Fund to the participating campaigns were related only to the amounts these campaigns could afford within their respective election spending limits, is irrelevant in establishing the fair commercial value of the impugned ads for each participating campaign. This purely arbitrary allocation, whether it was unilaterally determined by the Party or whether it was jointly agreed upon between the Party and each participating campaign, renders any claim for amounts in excess of the commercial value unreasonable under section 406 of the Act.

So to the extent the Cons might want to carry out similar schemes in the future, Martineau J.'s decision dictates that purchases for a particular area will be required to be allocated equally among the participating ridings, not arranged based solely on which ridings have room under their own spending caps. Which would almost certainly make the organization of such a plan far more difficult. And it would seem entirely possible that under Martineau J.'s analysis, some of the 2006 allocations from Con ridings may have been illegal once their ad buys are properly accounted for.

So while the Cons did indeed win on one major point of argument, they're a long ways from being out of the woods for their 2006 practices - and Martineau J.'s analysis may also make it a lot more difficult for them to engage in similar schemes in the future.

Mercy, mercy, mercy

The federal Cons have predictably started pointing fingers at the nearest available target after reaching the shocking realization that citizens of Ontario and B.C. might not appreciate Stephen Harper's choice to pay off their provinces to raise their tax bills. But the CP helpfully provides the answer to a burning question: would any MP be punished for parroting the party line?

Harris said he did not approach Flaherty, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, his caucus colleagues or their staff for guidance on how to handle his constituents' concerns about tax harmonization.

Sources say none of the MPs will be punished for speaking out.

Of course, this isn't the first example of the Benevolent Dear Leader showing his extreme compassion in matters of Conservative advantage. When cabinet ministers have ever so carelessly inserted party messages into what's supposed to be government business, or regional chairs have usurped the role of elected MPs by naming Con "liaisons" to do their jobs instead, Harper's forgiveness has been so obvious that nobody's even thought to wonder whether any punishment might be forthcoming. And he's likewise shown nothing but patience in dealing with Con MPs who succumbed to their party's pressure to participate in Conadscam.

But of course, even the most generous of compassion has its limits. For Harper, those apparently end when the same (or lesser) offences are committed by anybody not wearing Con blue. And let's not even speak of the unpardonable crime of travelling while brown.