Your money, their ads

Today, Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff has sent out a letter demanding an end to the rampant use of "10 percenters," as they're called, which are basically political flyers sent out to ridings by MPs, using taxpayer dollars.

It turns out that the Liberals' demands of today are quite similar to ones they raised while they were the ruling party; a concern that Conservatives portrayed back then as a death-bed conversion in the latter days of Paul Martin's government.  But what interested Conservatives back then, in terms of taxpayer-financed advertising, was larger.  I found this  interesting little transcript of a committee debate from 2005, in which Jay Hill, now the Government House Leader, says this during an exchange over the pamphlets:

This is an issue that I have repeatedly raised, Mr. Chairman. Every time this issue has come up, I've said that I'm more than willing to look at the use of householders and the use of ten percenters as soon as the government starts to be aware of the need to look at how they spend millions upon millions of tax dollars. That's the first point.

    I've never heard any concession on the part of the government that we should maybe take a look at whether it's appropriate to put up big banners, ads, and logos advertising the Government of Canada, because it gives an unfair advantage to whoever the government is. Over the past dozen of years, that has obviously been the Liberal Party of Canada. They've blurred the lines, and it has been well reported in the Gomery report that they blurred the lines between what was in the best interests of the Liberal Party of Canada and what was in the best interests of the Government of Canada.

Comments

[J.D. Lees]

All this shows is that opposition parties talk big and then flip flop when they become the government. Wow, what a revelation! The Liberals can do away with ten percenters, etc., when they take power again, but I'm betting they won't.

[Nola]

Way to go, Iggy ... now go all the way and renounce the $1.95 vote subsidy as well .... you go, guy ...!!!

[MyThought]

Leave in the $1.95 subsidy - democracy is important and big money shouldn't buy an election.

Leave out the ten percenters and put the money towards something more useful.