Thank God.
That's the best the they could do after two years of a Conservative minority government. Oh, they're trying their best, arranging for the media to video armored police teams bursting into the Conservative Party offices like Robert Mugabe's storm troopers in Zimbabwe. CBC Radio-One treated Canadians to a political panel of leftist university professors who happily chortled about how even though there was little of substance to the allegations, the widely televised imagery of the raid would stick in voters minds, and the Conservative government must fall.
So what happened? Apparently some Conservative Party candidates hadn't spent their entire budgets during the election, and they used their unused funds to buy National advertisements. Although the election act sets a limit on Party spending, Clause 422(2) says money allocated to individual candidates doesn't count towards that limit. Regardless of what the act says, The Liberals say it should count.
Well, when it comes to mismanagement of taxpayer dollars they're the experts.
What's funny is that Liberal Member of Parliament Marlene Jennings and nearly 100 other Liberals and NDP candidates had election expenses that fall in the same grey area. In Jennings case, she says her expenses shouldn't count because even though they were for advertising materials for the election, they were incurred before the election was officially called.
Hahahahahaha. Talk about things that make you go hmmmmm.
5 comments:
You obviously didn't bother to listen to Jennings. What she said was that every penny she spent, she raised herself (or her own riding association raised it for her). Not a single penny came from the national party. She explained that the transfer shown were funds raised by her riding association before the election and handed to her campaign by her riding association at the beginning of the campaign.
Thank you John (Manley? Turner? Doe? -you hid your profile) but I did understand her excuse.
Where she got the money is irrelevant. The supposed scandal is not how or where money was raised, but how much was spent; Whether the amount over the limit was excempt or not. (In this case it appears to be roughly 1.3 million dollars or so.)
It's clear that Jennings paid the Liberal Party for her election materials after the writ was dropped; materials that were used for her election.
The Conservative candidates in question paid their party for advertising that was done. In both cases there was a payment for services rendered.
It's you who've missed the point of my post. It's hypocritical for the Opposition Liberals,a party who's leaders mismanaged and misappropriated BILLIONS of dollars while in power, to raise such a self righteous stink over 1.3 million dollars in debatable election spending. Especially since, as I pointed out, Elections Canada had no problem approving similar expenses for Liberal and NDP candidates.
No money was lost. No money was stolen. Every penny accounted for.
My profile isn’t hidden. The only thing it contains is my name, which you’ve already noted is John.
I don’t think you come even close to understanding the position of Elections Canada; therefore, it’s easy for you to accept the arguments of people like Van Loan who are trying, I must say without much success, to tar others with accusations that they used exactly the same thing as the “in and out” scheme devised by the Conservatives.
Elections Canada believes that the Conservative candidates in question did not pay the Party for advertising that was for their riding campaigns. There are two spending limits set: one for the national level and for each riding (based on the number of voters in the riding).
To keep things honest, each candidate is required to name someone as their “official agent”. The official agent is responsible for every penny spent in an election, must keep the receipts, and must file a report with Elections Canada.
Numerous “official agents” and candidates for the Conservative Party in the last election are on record stating that they did not “spend” the money. They were never given a choice. They were never given control.
This was the national office using candidates’ accounts to cheat, and get past the 18 million dollar limit on national spending.
You're trying to divert attention away from the point of this post.
I wanted to point out two things.
1) The hypocrisy of the opposition Liberals in attempting to claim the moral high ground. It should have been a criminal matter, the way the party and it's leaders stole, misappropriated and outright mismanaged billions of tax payer dollars. I note you do not refute this. By comparison the so-called 1 million dollar over-limit election spending was as one person's spit is to a monsoon.
Secondly, it's a sad day for our country when the supposedly politically neutral bureaucracy of Elections Canada has one set of rules and standards for the Conservatives, and another for the Liberals and NDP.
As I said earlier, the money is and has been accounted for. Every penny. The alleged, ALLEGED mind you- offense was that the Party used money earmarked for local candidates in National ads. You're right in one thing, the local candidates involved didn't handle the money.
But Seeing as the ads were NATIONAL, then by definition the local candidates electorate were exposed to them too.
I have served twice as financial agent a nomination candidate and know full well the reporting rules. The Conservatives have never hid documents or refused any requests for documents by Election Canada, yet the Agency's supposed problem is that they apparently were afraid that the Conservative party would do so. This in no way was a legitimate excuse for engineering a media circus of a police raid in a manner guaranteed to imply criminal or other guilt and wrongdoing.
quote: "My profile isn’t hidden. The only thing it contains is my name, which you’ve already noted is John."
Might as well be anonymous John.
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