The law under which Elections Canada is investigating the Conservative Party of Canada for alleged overspending on advertising in the last election is a silly and undemocratic law. It should be repealed. But until it is, it remains the law of the land. If Conservatives knowingly violated it, they should suffer the legal consequences.I disagree with "silly" and "undemocratic" and with the idea that it should be repealed. However, I agree that if people and parties disagree with a law, the proper course of action is to bring in legislation to repeal the law, thereby suffering electoral consequences if the public disagrees. Ignoring and or deliberately breaking the law just because you don't agree with it is even sillier and more undemocratic than the law is supposed to be. It is the attitude of thugs and tyrants not parties of a supposed mature democracy. This is exactly the point I was trying to make with my commenter PaulM, yesterday. Thanks to the National Post for doing a better job of making my point. Recommend this Post
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Four Horsemen Alert
There is a National Post editorial today with which I have only minor disagreements. In this paragraph:
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I agree, its not good to break a stupid law. I experience this everyday as a gun owner. There are lots of absolutely stupid laws relating to gun ownership that I have to (and do) abide by.
ReplyDeleteBut this matter is not a question of someone choosing to not abide by a law they disagree with. This is a matter of INTERPRETING that law. There is, at the middle of this, a good faith misunderstanding about what the law actually says between Elections Canada and the CPC. Elections Canada says one thing, and in good faith the CPC disagrees. That it is going to court is an object lesson in the good faith belief of the CPC that this alleged violation is not actually a violation of the law.
What you are describing is someone doing something they know is illegal because they believe the law is unjust or stupid. That is not the case here.
What has occurred here is that a party engaged in a practice they reasonably believed to be legal, that they acted on that belief in good faith, and are now in a debate over whether their interpretation is correct or that of elections Canada.
If they were deliberately choosing to disobey a bad law they wouldn't have filed it all in their returns.
It isn't just me who is saying this, the National Post is saying the same thing. To everyone on the outside of Tory circles this looks like a case of some bright spark saying "I don't agree with spending limits so let's see what we can do to get around that stupid law". Now whether that was the case or not, the courts will ultimately decide, but out here in the boondocks, that is what looks to have happened.
ReplyDeleteAs to all of the filings, I will grant you that, although it could also be a case of hubris at work.
ReplyDelete"If they were deliberately choosing to disobey a bad law they wouldn't have filed it all in their returns."
ReplyDeletePart of the problem is that they are alleged not have done this. See Tonda MacCharles in today's Star:
"Now, the party is under investigation for filing returns with Elections Canada 'that it knew or ought reasonably to have known contained a materially false or misleading statement" on advertising expenses.'"
"It isn't just me who is saying this, the National Post is saying the same thing."
ReplyDeleteThat's naught but a weak argument, like saying "Its true because the Bible says so!"
"Now, the party is under investigation for filing returns with Elections Canada 'that it knew or ought reasonably to have known contained a materially false or misleading statement" on advertising expenses.'"
Based on what? We already know that Elections Canada went judge shopping to get their search warrant approved, how do we know a) that Tonda's source isn't wrong and b) that even if her source is right, an 'investigation' doesn't mean anything. I can investigate the Loch Ness Monster, that doesn't mean it exists. All the accounts so far have said that the Tories duly filed all the paperwork required, and that this is a question of interpretation.
What Tonda's probably talking about is the advertising invoices, which wouldn't be the CPC's issue, it would be the one who issued the invoice (ie. the advertising company), and there may well be a reasonable explanation for that.
If a national party does a regional ad buy: where local candidates all pool their money to get a single advertisement in a paper or on TV (as all parties have done since confederation), then the national party typically organizes it. They select the company designing the ad on behalf of the candidates, they collect all the money together from the candidates, and then they use it to buy the advertising.
The money spent is a local expense under the law. Now, the advertising company may, for their records, want to keep it all on one invoice, since in their mind it is one job. So they put in one invoice for the whole amount. The party comes back and says, actually, we need you to split it up into 16 amounts to individual campaigns. So, the company alters an invoice, which they send to the party, and keeps their original records as they were for their own accounting.
This is a pretty normal occurrance, but it explains why in one case the invoices for all the local campaigns had the same invoice numbers and spelling errors. Its not the CPC's fault, they did everything right, its the advertising company's fault, but its not illegal for them to do it that way.
We wouldn't even be talking about it if Elections Canada didn't have a difference of opinion with the CPC regarding the advertising itself.