Your tax dollars at work

I have a story in today's Star about how members of the Conservative government, in cartoonish fashion, are trying to pass off taxpayers' dollars as partisan gifts.

But wait, as they say in the infomercials -- there's more.

In Quebec,  as The Globe's Daniel LeBlanc reveals, Conservative MPs' newsletters -- financed by tax dollars --  are being used to portray the Bloc Quebecois as a friend to pedophiles.

In Manitoba, CBC tells us, minister Vic Toews is using his good offices to portray Michael Ignatieff as anti-Ukrainian.

All together, it paints quite the picture, doesn't it?.

P.S. One additional note about the cheques. Gerard Kennedy, when he headed a food bank, learned that the law can be a little loose on the definition of cheques; that unlikely scraps of paper can be honoured as promissory notes.  So he had a suggestion about  what to do with Van Loan's recent largesse in Innisfil and his apparent, personal cheque.  

"The one thing I did learn when I worked for the food bank is you can
actually cash those things. It's a legal document. I think we're going
to try to get hold of those people and tell them they actually got
double grants there. They got one from the government and one from Peter
Van Loan, who's apparently so riven with guilt over the time it took to
get to them that he wants to make it up to them."

Comments

[Cam]

The Quebec newsletters are disgusting. How low is low for this Party?

[Jim Harris]

Susan Delacourt is back in full Liberal battle gear again. Welcome back to Ottawa you dirty Liberal hack.

[MJ Patchouli]

Jim Harris: so only Liberals would decry the government using partisanship to hand out taxpayer dollars? I don't think so -- but I echo your welcome back to Susan Delacourt, whose work I missed while she was away. Welcome back -- maybe Jim knows something I don't, so if he's right, I'm glad that an excellent writer and political analyst as you is also a Liberal.

[Cam]

Mr. Harris, do you defend our taxpayer dollars being spent on newsletters accusing the Conservatives' political opponents as pedophiles?

[Gord Tulk]

and have we heard Suasn ever decry that the
Bloc'santi-canada politics are being taxpayer funded? Was she cheering on the Conservatives when they moved to get rid of public funding of parties last fall? And what about the ads put out by the liberals saying that the CP would put troops in the streets - they were partially government funded?

HYPOCRITE.

[James D'Ottawa]

Harper's people would do anything to anyone ..if it meant power.

[Cam]

Gord Tulk- a couple of things:

As much as I dislike seperatists I recognize that they are democratically elected. As such, they receive the same things that any other MP gets. And if they were to send such malicious statements out via the taxpayers dime I would be sreaming bloody murder. But they're not. How tough for the Conservatives, to realize that they are stooping beneath seperatists.

I don't know if Susan Delacourt cheered on the Conservatives last Fall, but I certainly didn't. The public funding was brought in to prevent undue influence from corporations and unions. Perhaps you favour that influence but I don't.

And the "ads" - stupid as they were- never actually aired on television. According to a story at the time that I just read they were leaked, and paid for by the Liberal Party, not us taxpayers.

The Conservatives have lost respect for taxpayers. And the base has noticed.