Scandalous

[Update 10:30]:
Via the Globe and Mail, here are the Search Warrant documents:
First Part
Second Part
[/Update]
On my best days, I don't have a lot of use for PM Stephen Harper and his merry band of goons. Today is not one of my best days - especially not after hearing about the latest round on Con$ervative shenanigans.

Not only has the content of the Elections Canada search warrant become public, we also get some more insight into the arrogance and ignorance of the Con$ervatives.

The Canadian Press obtained a copy of the documents, which were supposed to be released Monday by an Ontario court.

Other media, including the Toronto Star and CTVglobemedia, received the documents in a private briefing from the Conservatives on Sunday in Ottawa, the CBC's Keith Boag reported.

Boag said CBC News requested to attend the briefings, but was rejected and told by party spokesman Ryan Sparrow that it was a private meeting. Reporters from the Canadian Press, Maclean's magazine and Canwest Global Communications Corp., along with others, were also excluded.

Giving some reporters a briefing before Monday's court release of the warrant allows the party a chance to shape the story, but it also creates the impression that the Conservatives need to spin it, Boag said.

So - the Con$ervatives are returning to their "shut out the public" approach. Apparently, we don't need to know what our government is up to, nor do we need to know how the governing party attempted to subvert the electoral laws in Canada?

I had heard rumblings that the Con$ were playing games with money in order to overcome the limitations of the campaign finance laws last election, but didn't spend much time covering it here because I couldn't find anything to corroborate what I was hearing allusions to from a source that I felt was credible.

However, in the last few weeks, more about this has been coming out in the news, and it is showing us the worst of the HarperCon$ and their attitudes.

Even more unsettling is the way that the Con$ are trying to muzzle the media - without which we would have less than no information about our government at all. This most recent attempt at coverup and spin by the HarperCon$ stands as a clear example of the disrespect, nay contempt, with which the Con$ervatives regard Canadians. Shutting out the media suggests that the Con$ have something to hide, and we should all be worried about that.

This is a government that is still new enough it shouldn't have any baggage to speak of. Instead, we see that the government is being run by a bunch of thugs who cannot even work with the fundamentals of our electoral laws (which are pretty straightforward when compared to the more subtle arcana of criminal and constitutional law in this land).

How can Canadians trust a party, and its leadership, when they won't even comply with the public institutions that oversee the electoral process? Whether the Con$ actually did something which contravenes Canada's electoral law is immaterial. Their actions in this spat with Elections Canada have underlined for Canadians the fundamentals of the HarperCon$ and their government - it is not Transparency and Accountability as their platform claimed, instead it is Secrecy and Lies.