Now it is time for everyone's favorite game: Rehash a mildy amusing quote from several years ago and use it to poke holes in the Conservatives platform. YAY!!!!!
Settle down everyone. We will start off at the top of the list...as opposed to a random sentence 2/3 of the way down the list...ummmm, anyways we are going to start of with Accountability and Reforming the Financing of Federal political Parties:
"Under the Liberals, money and influence have played far too large a role in Canadian politics. During the sponsorship inquiry, Canadians learned of envelopes full of cash being used to fund Liberal Party campaigns, and of money from government contracts being funneled back to the Liberals. The "pay to play"” years in Liberal Ottawa must come to an end.
The plan
A Conservative government will:
-• Limit individual donations to parties or candidates to a maximum of $1,000.
-• Prohibit all corporate, union, and organization donations to political parties, ridings, and candidates.
- Ban cash donations to political parties or candidates of more than $20.
-• Extend to ten years the period for which Elections Act violations can be investigated and prosecuted."
(Source:Conservative Party Election Platform 2006)
First things first, envelopes full of money are far too bulky and would be very akward to carry around without suspicion. The Liberals used cheques. They are a lot smaller and you can give larger amounts of money to people without hearing the question "is that an envelope full of money in your pocket or are you just happy to see me". Secondly, I thought the role of the Member of Parliament was to represent their riding and get as much support from Ottawa as you can. Now I am not condoning what happened, but if they dispersed the money to all Liberal ridings, there wouldn't be as much of an issue but I guess the PM's riding would take preference.
Now down to the Conservatives:
1-The Conservatives have obtained a lot larger sums of money above $1000 in the 2002 federal election and when the Liberal Party called for Mr. Harpers list of contributors, Steve-o only gave 54 of the 64 financial contributors who spent over $1075 for his campaign. Now the missing 10 people contributed over $40,000 to that campaign. Now, I do not know how that broke down but even on average, that is $4000 per person, but that is pretty infeasible to see happening. Harper got some big donations from people who, either the Conservatives or the donors, do not want to be known that they support the party that is so on the right, you can see China.(And yes I am aware of the irony of China being an extreme left wing state.)
2-The Conservatives are a big business party, The PC's were, The Reform were, The Alliance were, so what makes the new Conservatives special. They can lie through their teeth and get away with it by quoting Gomry!, Gomry!, Gomry!!!
3-Banning cash donations of more than $20 is completely ridiculous. As I stated earlier, cheques allow you to give larger sums of money without having embarrassing bulges in your pocket.
4-Legally, the longest you have to keep financial records is 5 years. If you try to investigate something from 9 years ago, the people have probably shredded the files legally and you won't be getting much information about it. Also, if they did try to get that passed, the provinces would use the not-withstanding clause just so they don't have to use Nunavut as a place to store documents.
That is just section 1 of the first page of the blue book. If I can tear apart the first section of the book completely, then I WILL be getting carpal-tunnel syndrome by the time I am done with this book.
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