Tonight's diary focusses on the latest scandal to befall Canada's minority Conservative government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper. More accurately, it's about how this government has run afoul of campaign finance laws and Elections Canada, and how their talking points defending their behaviour were ripped to shreds today by an appeals court.
Follow me below the fold for details.
For the latest on the story, you can go to this CBC News article here. Also check out this Toronto Star article with the latest and greatest.
To make a long story short, Elections Canada, Canada's nonpartisan, independent elections administrator is also the enforcer of Canada's elections law. To most Canadians, they are an extremely well respected, unimpeachable authority, an honest broker, and totally above the partisan fray. Political attacks on their integrity and authority were unthinkable for a long period of time. The current Conservative government changed that.
The scandal resulted from the 2006 election that brought the Conservatives to power in a minority Parliament. IN that election, they triumphed over a Liberal Party tarnished by the sponsorship scandal link, and suffering from serious political infighting after Paul Martin engineered the early departure of Jean Chretien, the long serving Prime Minister. The Conservatives ran on a platform of accountabiliy, transparency, and cleaning up government. Enough Canadians bought this cause to propel Stephen Harper to the Prime Minister's Office.
During that election, the Conservative Party engineered what has been termed the 'in and out' scheme, by which they would transfer campaign funds between the national and riding level campaigns. Under this scheme, the national party transferred money to local campaigns once it had already reached its spending limits. Under this scheme, the ridings would then transfer the money back to the national party to purchase advertising, ostensibly for the local level. The ads purchased were identical to national campaign ads, with the minor inclusion of a "paid for by" at the end. Local ridings would then claim the money as a local campaign expense.
Eventually, this activity was uncovered by elections Canada, and after a police raid by the RCMP on Conservative Party headquarters, a civil suit was underway from two former party candidates refused rebates for expenses from Elections Canada. The civil court had sided with the candidates, as no charges had been laid following the police raid.
The Conservatives have been clinging to this court's ruling as a defense of their scheme, calling it a matter of a difference of opinion with Elections Canada. However, the whole story majorly changed with the laying of administrative charges against the Conservative Party, 2 Senators who were major campaign figures, and two other party officials by the Public Prosecution Service, an independent office ironically established by Prime Minister Harper. Yes, to sum up, the governing party of the day has been charged with violations of election law in the very campaign that saw them ascend to power. Truly, this is a scandal of massive proportions, and could bring a government down.
Since the laying of charges, in the House of Commons during Question Period over the last few days and in the media, the Conservative defense has focussed around the lower court ruling, saying Elections Canada was wrong to pursue charges when the courts had sided with the party. That house of cards came tumbling down today, with the Federal Court of Appeal overturning the lower court decision. Opposition critics have been quick to criticize the party.
The lesson to be learned here is simple. Don't put all of your eggs in one basket... especially when that basket is a lower court. I'm very interested to hear what the next version of the talking points are, or what the next defense of an unprecedented scandal will be.