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.

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?

Destruction in progress

Amy Minsky nicely sums up why Elections Canada is set up to avoid political challenges to its funding:

For many federal agenies, requests for additional money must be voted on and approved in the Senate and the House of Commons.

Other agencies, such as Elections Canada, however, do not require this sign-off. The agency operates with this independence in order to remove any implication of political partisanship when funds are voted, said Treasury Board expenditure management expert David Enns.

But then, the Cons never met an independent institution they weren't eager to politicize. And sure enough, one of Stephen Harper's hand-picked, citizen-funded Senate cronies can't resist the opportunity to do exactly what Elections Canada's funding structure is designed to avoid:

"Probably in itself, $100 million is not very much money," said Conservative Senator Doug Finley. "But in relation to the annual moneys budgeted by Elections Canada(,) that seems to be an inordinate amount of (extra) money to ask in terms of your annual budget."
...
"Since I have been involved in politics, there have been byelections pretty well every single year," Finley said in response to Enns' statement (that additional funding was required to administer by-elections). "I know my party budgets accordingly. Why is it that Elections Canada seems incapable of doing this?"

On distant threats

Before anybody panics too much about the Cons' latest election threat, it's worth keeping in mind the process that their dumpster budget would have to go through before that possibility could materialize.

As noted in Gloria Galloway's coverage of the Senate Finance Committee's fully-justified decision to carve out some of the more gratuitously non-budgetary parts of the bill, the Cons have thus far managed to get their way in the full Senate - meaning that they can simply vote down the committee's amendments and pass the bill in full, dog's breakfast and all:

(T)he bill will go back to the Senate as a whole for final reading with those portions removed.

The Conservatives could, at that point, vote to have them re-installed. The Liberals and the independents combined hold the barest of majorities in the Red Chamber but they have not been able to get enough bodies in the seats to stop the Conservatives from pushing the bill through.

Moreover, even if the third-reading vote becomes the first one where the Senate opposition is able to use its majority, it's worth questioning whether the Cons's spin as to what would come next makes any particular sense. If the Senate does return the bill with the committee's deletions, then the House of Commons would effectively have two choices: it could either pass the bill as amended by the Senate, or junk the bill up again and send it back to the Senate.

But I'd argue that the Cons' case to push the latter would be more difficult than what they've faced so far with the dumpster bill. In effect, having pushed the bill forward by trumpeting the importance of its budgetary measures, they'd then have to hold hostage every economic initiative they claim to care about in order to add the extra provisions back in. Which means that they'd be relatively likely to simply pass the amended bill if the Libs were to hold up long enough to press the point.

Again, I don't actually expect that to happen: most likely either the Cons will strike a deal with the Libs in the Senate to let through a private member's bill or two in exchange for getting the budget passed, or the Libs will blink on a third-reading showdown. But even if the Senate follows through with the amended bill, we'd still be a long way from any election other than one of the Cons' choice. And if Harper is determined to go to the polls, we should know by now that it doesn't matter whether or not he has a stalled confidence bill to use as an excuse.

Suddenly lacking urgency

Shorter Doug Finley:

As a recent and high-profile recipient of Senate patronage, I strongly believe that Canadians should be patient with the Senate and its associated patronage. For at least the next 12 years.

Bogus analysis

Shorter Jonathan Kay:
While we're at it, Brian Mulroney is a well-connected lawyer, businessman and Prime Minister of Canada. So we can dismiss out of hand the possibility that he would have jeopardized his reputation by taking cash in a paper bag.