Angry in the Great White North

OK, let me get this straight. This business of Conservative advertising is the Tory version of Adscam?

I suppose there are some parallels:

• The Liberals took millions of taxpayer dollars to promote the Liberal government.
• The Conservatives spent a million dollars of Conservative Party money to promote the Conservative Party.

• The Liberals took those taxpayers' millions meant for advertising and gave away much of it to friends, many of whom then stuffed the money back in envelopes and gave the cash back to the Liberals.
• The Conservatives took that party's million meant for advertising and bought advertising.

• The Liberals created a special ops group inside of the PMO, out of reach of Quebec ministers such as Paul Martin and Stephane Dion, and ran things secretly until Alan Cutler blew the whistle on the scheme.
• The Conservatives accurately wrote down all the money spent in neat columns, signed their names to it, and submitted the forms to Elections Canada.

• The Sponsorship Scandal revolved around a secret scheme that turned an little-known effort to make Canada more popular in Quebec into a kickback operation that moved millions of tax dollars into Liberal Party coffers via brown envelopes and suitcases stuffed with cash.
• The advertising thing hinges on whether a Conservative ad that looks like a national ad but that has the name of a local candidate at the end of the ad counts as local advertising or should be counted as national advertising.

Elections Canada has decided that the ads (national in character but with the local candidate's name at the end) does not count as local advertising. Based on what criteria? Just how much "local" content does there have to be? Is a national-style ad with the name of the local candidate at the end just a crappy local ad? And if Elections Canada starts judging an ad on how effective it is going to be for the local candidate, will it start judging ads on their quality? The use of lighting and colour? Whether the points are made effectively? Is the candidate photogenic?

There are too many bureaucrats in this country who seem to think their job is to be editors instead of merely managers. In their defence, Liberal-style laws force them into this position. The very fact that tax money is used to reimburse some portion of these expenses does legitimately place these bureaucrats in the position of trying to spend our money wisely. But in the end, that decision really belongs to the voters. The ads are effective or they're not. They'll win votes or they won't. The total number of votes won by a party translates into the party subsidy handed out by the government. Bad ads will lower that amount.

The question is settled by the election. Elections Canada ought to make sure that advertising money is spent on advertising and otherwise make sure the election runs smoothly. Forcing Elections Canada into the position of deciding whether an ad is good enough on some measure is insulting to me. I'll make that decision on voting day.

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