Harper's Conservatives Embroiled In Scandal Of Their Own

The Conservative party is embroiled in scandal over the alleged misuse of campaign funds and overspending in the last federal election, after the RCMP assisted with a search warrant for Elections Canada at Conservative party headquarters last week.

At the SPP summit in New Orleans yesterday, Harper couldn't avoid questions on the alleged "in-and-out" scheme his party ran in the last election, depositing money in local campaigns and then withdrawing it again immediately to use to pay for national advertising. Perhaps it wasn't surprising that Harper, who campaigned against campaign spending limits, would hatch a scheme to bypass them (or have his people hatch a scheme for him). Never mind that to the rest of us, it looks like local campaigns laundered money for the national party. And never mind that having fought all the way to the Supreme Court (and lost) on the issue of campaign spending, Harper probably knew the law better than anyone.

Harper maintains that the Tories followed election spending rules. He also promised not to do the same thing again, "if" it turns out to have been against the rules.

But the Conservative response might just be making things worse by fighting back with a civil suit and claims that Elections Canada is just out to get them.

The Tories also tried to put their own spin on the scandal by releasing 650 pages of court documents, taking the unusual step of briefing only a "limited number" of reporters. But when other journalists learned of the briefing and showed up unexpectedly, the Conservative officials switched hotels, cancelled a briefing, and left via a fire stairwell to avoid pursuit by television cameras--which, of course, just made them seem like they had something to hide.

The Court documents themselves seem to suggest that the Tories knew they were doing an end run around the law. As the Star reports, "Among the documents were comments from local Conservative campaign officials expressing serious misgivings about the 'in-and-out' scheme. One called it 'a little too creative.' Two ridings flatly refused to participate."

And now even former Conservative candidates themselves are speaking out, saying they feel used by the party.

Some candidates who participated in the scheme had second thoughts, but "had to be told it was 'too late' to later pull out" according to a Tory official.

One former candidate even claims he was prevented from running again because he said no to the scheme:

Mr. Marler, said in his case it all began in December 2005 when he received a telephone call from Nelson Bouffard, a Conservative party organizer in Montreal responsible for his riding.

"I said, I'm sorry, I'm not going to permit that to happen unless I understand exactly what it is."

Candidates like Marler didn't cook up the scheme, which is why they have spoken out against it. But the key players who did may have to answer for it.

Ultimately, the Conservative party will also have to answer to voters who thought they were an alternative to Liberal corruption. Election spending limits were put in place in the first place to keep elections fair by allowing Canadians to hear a diversity of political voices, rather than just whoever has the money to pay for the most ads. If the extra million that the Tories managed to sneak into their national advertising campaign by bending or ignoring the rules is what allowed them to win their minority government, then that's hardly fair at all. It's also not the kind of thing voters thought the party stood for, after Harper condemned the Liberals for their own misdirection of advertising funds as revealed in the sponsorship scandal, and the "culture of corruption" Harper said it showed.

No matter how often the Tories proclaim their innocence, and no matter the outcome of the Elections Canada investigation, voters in the next election will know that the scheme cooked up to get around spending limits for a national ad campaign fails the smell test for ethical behaviour, as the Vancouver Sun rightly points out.

And it will be Canadian voters who will, in the end, decide whether or not to hold the Conservatives accountable.