Election expenses battle heats up

And so it starts.

Within the next couple of weeks, all the former Liberal leadership candidates have to submit an updated accounting of their campaign debts — most importantly, how they're going to pay off the big loans they received. The Star reported on this over the past week.

The rough tally of that combined debt, as of March (the last time we received publicly available numbers), is about $2.8-million — an estimated $800,000 of that belongs to leader Stéphane Dion.

Any leadership candidate who doesn't have a rigorous plan to pay off those loans will then find that they are deemed as "contributions" and thus in violation of Elections Canada law, limiting each donation to $1,100 per person in a leadership contest. (And by the way, that extends over years; someone who gave $1,100 to Dion in 2006 can't give him $1,100 in 2008 to help pay off his loans.)

The Conservatives, bank on it, will be saying that Elections Canada (or public enemy number one) is showing favouritism to the Liberals if they don't make the loans payable immediately. In fact, however, the law does not just allow the extension — it provides for it.

Today in the House of Commons, the Conservatives used the 15  minutes before Question Period to bash Dion and the Liberals as usual. And they started the drumbeat — Liberals should be paying their loans by June 3, not asking for any extensions.

Here's Conservative MP Joe Preston:

Mr. Joe Preston (Elgin—Middlesex—London, CPC): Mr. Speaker, when financing their leadership campaigns the Liberal leader and his opponents received millions of dollars from wealthy and powerful individuals.

The Canada Elections Act clearly stated that loans taken out during the leadership race must be paid back within 18 months or they become legal donations over the donation limit.

The June 3 deadline is fast approaching. Some have speculated Elections Canada may extend the period to repay the loans.

According to Duff Conacher, “Elections Canada will be acting unethically and undemocratically if it lets any of the Liberal leadership candidates extend their loans past the 18 month deadline”.

Will the Liberal leadership contestants skirt contribution limits, thus breaking the law, through massive personal loans from wealthy, powerful individuals by not repaying their loans on time?

Will Elections Canada give special treatment to the Liberal Party by extending the deadline?

 

Dipping into the campaign goodie bag

Prime Minister Stephen Harper unveiled a defence strategy this week that seems to exist only in audio format, while Liberal leader Stéphane Dion  has been talking up a carbon-tax plan that also seems a little incomplete.

The coincidence would seem to suggest that the leaders of Canada's two main political parties have decided that half-baked  proposals  are better than no ideas at all.  Or maybe all their big thinkers are on vacation, or at some conference somewhere for policy wonks.

But there's a better explanation — the spring election, or lack of it.

A Conservative strategist confided a few weeks ago that the longer the Harper government has to wait for an election, the more it has to raid the ever-evolving campaign platform. Announcements that Harper had been planning to make on the campaign trail are now being rolled out as government proposals — that's probably why they look a little sketchier than a full-fledged policy. Election announcements are expected to have a shelf life of one or two news cycles, not 20 years.

Dion, meanwhile, is believed to be rushing out the carbon-tax idea before it's ready simply because he's impatient to talk about the environment and policy, in a way that he might have been talking on the campaign trail. Liberals will  freely admit that the carbon-tax idea isn't fully formed or ready for prime time yet.

That's something that Harper and Dion have in common right now — both leaders would probably rather be fighting an election this month. Harper's hands are tied by his fixed-date election legislation. Dion's hands are tied because neither he nor his party are ready.

So in the meantime,  presumably, we're  only going to be getting shapes and suggestions of policies. It's weird, but what isn't weird in Ottawa these days?

 

A new brand of politics

The Harper government is often accused of taking its cue from the U.S. Republicans. Hard to imagine that would be the case if John McCain is elected president and follows through on some of the things he said in speech today in Columbus, Ohio.

To wit:

"For too long, now, Washington has been consumed by a hyper-partisanship that treats every serious challenge facing us as an opportunity to trade insults, disparage each other's motives and fight about the next election."

Or...

"There are serious issues at stake in this election, and serious differences between the candidates. And we will argue about them, as we should. But it should remain an argument among friends; each of us struggling to hear our conscience, and heed its demands; each of us, despite our differences, united in our great cause, and respectful of the goodness in each other. That is how most Americans treat each other. And it is how they want the people they elect to office to treat each other."

Or how about this one?

"I will hold weekly press conferences. I will regularly brief the American people on the progress our policies have made and the setbacks we have encountered. When we make errors, I will confess them readily, and explain what we intend to do to correct them."

No, that doesn't sound much like anything we'd hear here, does it?

 

 

 

Welcome, Jack

Last Friday, Leslie Swartman was communications director for Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion.

This morning, she became the mother of Giacomo (Jack) Robert Falco, born at 7:10 a.m.

Jack's dad, Nick Masciantonio, has his office on the same floor as the Star's Ottawa bureau, in the National Press Building.

Nick, through email, reports that mom and son are doing well, but that "Papa is a blubbering mess."

The new campaign battleground: 'Society' vs. 'state'

This column by the New York Times' David Brooks (also reprinted in today's National Post) doesn't mention Canada, but it is required reading for anyone who's trying to figure out the underlying politics of our next election campaign.

It revolves around how Conservatives are on the rise in Britain because they've changed - not just their strategy or tactics but their entire thinking.

The role-of-government debate is over; "quality of life" is the new discussion. Raw individualism is out; "society" is in.

"They want voters to think of the Tories as the party of society while Labor is the party of the state. They want the country to see the Tories as the party of decentralized organic networks and the Laborites as the party of top-down mechanistic control," Brooks writes.

It doesn't take too much thinking to see the parallels here in Canada. The child-care debate leaps to mind as a good example of society versus the state.

While the Liberals weren't looking the last few years, Canada's own Conservatives have roughly tacked their policies along the same path, modelling their tax and social platforms around society and neighbourhood and communities. Liberals will try to pitch this simply as the Conservatives' lack of faith in government and institutions - and some of that characterization is well-founded - but they will risk looking anachronistic if they allow themselves to be cast as the advocates of big government. The same is true for the New Democrats. The Greens, interestingly, probably do more talking about society than they do the state, which may explain why they're on the upswing here too in recent years.

We do know that Conservative strategists have been borrowing from the playbook of their counterparts in the U.K. - the high-tech "war room" in Ottawa's suburbs is a direct imitation, according to senior campaign planners.

So it's probably a good idea to look closely at what the U.K. Conservatives are teaching Canadians, and vice versa, about the nature of the political debate in the 21st century.

Ignatieff's bragging rights

Just in time for his 61st birthday tomorrow, Deputy Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff (seen at right in April) has made it to Foreign Policy magazine's Top-100 list of public intellectuals.

Ignatieff's not the only Canadian connection  on the prestigious  list -- New Yorker writer and author Malcolm Gladwell's there, as well as Lee Smolin, a physicist at Waterloo's Perimeter Institute.

But he is the only Canadian politician.

Foreign Policy, published out of the U.S. by the Carnegie Endowment, is asking readers to narrow down the Top-100 list to just five leading intellectuals. So technically, Ignatieff is still merely a finalist in a cast that the magazine describes this way:

"They are some of the world’s most introspective philosophers and rabble-rousing clerics. A few write searing works of fiction and uncover the mysteries of the human mind. Others are at the forefront of modern finance, politics, and human rights."

Foreign Policy doesn't say whether Ignatieff made the list because of his introspection or because of his rabble-rousing.

Other international notables on the Foreign Policy list include the Pope, chessmaster Garry Kasparov, France's Jacques Attali and Thomas Friedman, the NY Times columnist and author of the renowned books The World is Flat and The Lexus and the Olive Tree. 

P.S.

A hat tip to Liberal blogger Keith Torrie for noting Ignatieff's presence on the newly released list.

The Great Communicator

After a long hiatus, Bob Rae is back to blogging - in the voice of Stephen Harper. Seriously. This morning, deadpan, Rae posted a letter he says he got through Access to Information - from the PM to the president of Tim Horton's.

The letter praises the decision to fire an employee for giving away a Timbit, because "it's really just the beginning of the end."

It also contains some communication advice for any negative fallout: "Stick by your original plan. The bad publicity will come and go. Don't answer questions. Attack the questioner. Challenge their credibility. Smear Coffee Time."

UPDATE: The blog entry has been "disappeared." Apparently Rae's sense of humour isn't universally shared and he voluntarily took it down after someone didn't find his fake letter funny. It's one thing, I guess, to call Tim Horton's cruel and heartless for firing an employee, but it's just going too far to compare the doughnut empire to the Harper regime.

A week ends, none too soon

It's hard to pick just one low point of political rhetoric this week -- though the Prime Minister reviving his old ‘anti-Semite’ smears against Liberal MPs definitely qualifies. For those who missed it, Harper's comments came in a radio interview, in which he talked about how "...anti-Israel sentiment, really [can be] just...a thinly disguised veil for good old fashioned anti-Semitism."

Then Harper said: "I am disturbed that there are some elements in our political system, there are even some members of Parliament...some that were willing to cater to that kind of opinion."

Harper must have felt this worked when he first dragged out the allegation in 2006.

Pulling the smear out again this week, on the occasion of Israel's 60th anniversary as a nation, seems a little much.

But there was one, rare high point in an otherwise below-the-belt week in Canada's bleak political discourse. It came yesterday when Bill Blaikie, the longest-serving MP in the Commons, and the Deputy Speaker, shut down an inane, "in,out" chanting routine that Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre has been using in the Commons with mixed effect. (Actually, here in the office, we've been having some fun watching the trouble he's having getting backbenchers to chant in harmony with him. It's like watching choreography for the unco-ordinated.)

Here's what happened today:

Mr. Pierre Poilievre (Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Treasury Board, CPC): Mr. Speaker, I have systematically demonstrated that the Liberals participated in a program of in and out. They did this to get around national spending limits and to amplify their taxpayer-funded Elections Canada return.

On July 8, 2004, the Liberal Party transferred to Beth Phinney's local campaign $5,000. On July 9, 2004, Beth Phinney's local campaign transferred to the Liberal Party $5,000.

(ed note: And here the chant begins....) Five thousand in, five thousand out; in, out--

The Deputy Speaker: Order. Any more chanting like that, some people will find themselves just out.

Amen and TGIF.

No love lost

There was a real siege feeling around the Hill today after Question Period. Maybe it was because of bikers in the news. Maybe because there's nothing much happening here but nastiness, meanness and more nastiness.

But never mind about me trying to describe it -- this transcript of a scrum with the Conservatives' chief government whip, Jay Hill, says it all. The questions are from various reporters, trying to get something out of Hill before he slammed the door on them at his office just off the Commons' foyer.

Jay Hill: I don't discuss what takes place at the Board of Internal Economy.

Question: Why, isn't that public money, isn't that public money Mr. Hill?

Question: Are you guys proud of your behaviour in there today?

Question: (inaudible) isn't that public money Mr. Hill? Isn't that public money Mr. Hill?

Jay Hill: Are you proud of your questions?

Question: Yeah. Are you proud of your behaviour? Are you, are you proud of your questions?

Question: So you're doing what you just did in there. You're going to browbeat

Question: What's wrong in asking you a question? We can't ask you questions?

Question: You're trying to browbeat, browbeat, browbeat people?

Question: Isn't that public money in this budget? Isn't that my money?

And there, the scrum abruptly ends with a slammed door. Is it summer-break time yet?

Copps weighs in on Clinton's uphill battle

Yesterday, I noted that Hillary Clinton is not the first woman -- or last, probably -- to keep fighting on in a political race with the odds stacked against her. I noted that it happened in 2003 with Sheila Copps and again in 2006, with Martha Hall-Findlay.

Copps graciously has offered some thoughts on the subject. Here they are, verbatim:

I think the issue is much deeper, not to diminish the last woman standing angle. Why is Hillary even in this position? She has received incredibly biased coverage because let's face it: For all of our claims to a lock on democracy we in North America have difficulty with women in leadership roles. Sexism is still unfortunately rampant. Hence most political watchers don't understand the significance of a Hillary loss to the continuing disillusionment of political women.