Yesterday, the RCMP raided the Conservative Party offices as part of the Elections Canada investigation of dodgy money laundering tactics used by the CPC during the 2006 Election.
But Prime Minister Stephen Harper fired back with a counterattack against Mr. Corbett and Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand, who is being sued by the representatives of the candidates for failing to reimburse those expenses – a suit launched after Mr. Corbett opened his investigation.
“The Conservative Party initiated court action against Elections Canada some time ago on the advertising issue,” Mr. Harper told Parliament during the daily Question Period yesterday.
“I also would observe that tomorrow Elections Canada officials were scheduled to be examined by lawyers from the Conservative Party. While today's actions may or may not delay that somewhat, we remain extremely confident in our legal position.”
Yes, Mr. Harper, we all know that you've been in a pissing match with Elections Canada since 2006. I said it then, and I'll say it now - there's nothing more infuriating to voters than a party that claims to be all about "law and order" that turns around and ignores the laws that should bind and govern its own conduct.
The current generation of "Conservatives" seems to believe that the rules apply to everyone except themselves, and will try to insinuate that everyone else is the real problem.
Coming from a government whose legacy is rapidly becoming "accountability for thee, not for me", it's difficult to feel even the slightest pang of sympathy for Mr. Harper on this matter.
Coming from a government whose most recent acts of intellectual dishonesty and debate squashing include:
1. Introducing ministerial censorship powers as part of legislative changes to the income tax act.
2. Changing immigration policy by fiat in a budget implementation bill.
3. Attempting to grant rights to those who cannot exercise rights freely (Bill C-484). {yes, it's officially a private member's bill, but I said before that Harper was going to use that mechanism to legislate the topics he can't get away with doing officially, so Harper owns it in my opinion}
So, not only has Harper done his level best to stifle and squelch debate in the House of Commons, he has slammed doors shut on access to information (or releasing stuff so heavily redacted it's not funny), he now wants Canadians to accept that his party is above the laws of the land too.
[Update 18:00 16/04/08]:
Garth Turner has an excellent post telling the "insider" story of how the HarperCon$ are out to rape Canadian taxpayers:
The Tories are alleged to have broken election laws by transferring marketing expenses to local campaigns when they should have been counted as part of the national media buy. In doing so, they’d be able to exceed the legal spending limit. Worse, by passing cash through riding associations, they’d then created a situation in which local candidates could claim a larger post-election refund from Elections Canada. In essence, ripping taxpayers.
But it did not stop there.
A few months after the election, still a Conservative MP, I was invited to give a speech to a riding association annual general meeting in Quebec. Before I got to my feet, the treasurer gave his report, and was pleased to tell the crowd that tens of thousands of dollars had been loaned to the campaign by the national party, and then paid back immediately. While that did not give any money for the local election effort (they lost), it did earn it a fat refund afterwards, since taxpayers are on the hook to reimburse of 60% of campaign expenses. In this case, it was money never spent on electioneering – just passed through, for no other reason than to milk the system.
This is nothing short of a money laundering scheme designed not only to subvert the electoral law of Canada regarding campaign spending, but it was also clearly designed to defraud the Canadian taxpayer.
[/Update]
No comments:
Post a Comment