Democracy Gone Astray

Democracy, being a human construct, needs to be thought of as directionality rather than an object. As such, to understand it requires not so much a description of existing structures and/or other related phenomena but a declaration of intentionality.
This blog aims at creating labeled lists of published infringements of such intentionality, of points in time where democracy strays from its intended directionality. In addition to outright infringements, this blog also collects important contemporary information and/or discussions that impact our socio-political landscape.

All the posts here were published in the electronic media – main-stream as well as fringe, and maintain links to the original texts.

[NOTE: Due to changes I haven't caught on time in the blogging software, all of the 'Original Article' links were nullified between September 11, 2012 and December 11, 2012. My apologies.]

Saturday, January 21, 2012

Top donors to conservative advocacy group also donated to Conservative Party, documents show

OTTAWA — More than half of the top donors to a conservative advocacy organization that released a video attacking interim Liberal leader Bob Rae also gave money to the Conservative Party.

Of those who made donations of $1,000 or more to the National Citizens Coalition during the election campaign, 54 per cent also made contributions to the Conservative Party over the past five years, election records show.

Some gave as much as $10,500 to the group.

The donation pattern shows that even if the organization once led by Stephen Harper claims no direct links to the Conservative Party, it still draws on a similar base for its support.

Donations to third parties do not have the same cap that applies to contributions to political parties, which are now limited to $1,200 annually.

That leaves a loophole in Canada’s election finance laws: Contributors can give large sums to advocacy organizations to fund political advertising that they couldn’t legally give to parties or candidates. Unlike contributions to political entities, however, they are not tax-deductible.

Although spending by these groups is regulated during the campaign, there are no limits on what they can spend on political advertising outside the writ period.

Effectively, advocacy groups such as the National Citizens Coalition or the Friends of Canadian Broadcasting, or labour unions such as CUPE or PSAC, are free to take unlimited donations and advertise as much as they like before an election.

They can function like the political action committees or “PACs” that dominate U.S. politics by raising money and running ads with at least the appearance of independence from the candidates they support.

Canada has no PAC system. Instead, the elections law regulates only groups that want to advertise during an election campaign.

But advertising before and after elections is seen as increasingly important in modern politics, when the parties are in a state of permanent campaign.

amid speculation that Rae might contest for the Liberal leadership, the National Citizens Coalition this week released a YouTube video highlighting his contentious record as premier of Ontario from 1990 to 1995.

Before the last two elections, the Tories used similar character attack ads outside the writ period to discredit successive Liberal leaders Stéphane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, a strategy that some credit for Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s majority government victory this spring.

The National Citizens Coalition claims it gets no funding from the Conservative Party and operates independently, but the donation records show that its most generous supporters also give generously to the Conservative Party.

Liberal Party researchers identified 101 donors in the advocacy group’s past election returns who have are also listed in Elections Canada records with contributions to the Conservatives that they or a family member with the same postal code made.

Together, these people gave more $105,474 to the Tories and their candidates since 2007 and almost exactly the same amount, $105,120, in reportable contributions to the National Citizens Coalition.

Among them are one of the group’s top donors, Robert Colborne of Calgary, who gave the group $10,500 during the campaign. Over the past years, Colborne has given $4,200 to the Conservative Party or its candidates, including $1,000 for Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney and $1,100 for Prime Minister Stephen Harper during the 2008 election.

During the same campaign, former Encana executive Gwyn Morgan gave $20,000 to the advocacy group. He had previously donated $1,000, not long after opposition MPs rejected Harper’s choice of Morgan to head up a commission to review patronage appointments.

The National Citizens Coalition has long-standing links to Canadian conservative politics. It its early years, it opposed socialized medicine, but now advocates more generally for smaller government and lower taxes.

During his hiatus from Parliament Hill, Harper served as director of the National Citizens Coalition and led a court fight against third-party spending limits, infamously styled in the Supreme Court as Harper v. Canada.

During the spring election, the advocacy group bought ads in the Globe and Mail and National Post that targeted the three opposition leaders — Ignatieff, Jack Layton and Gilles Duceppe — for killing jobs and raising taxes, but made no mention of the leader who was prime minister in the proceeding five years — Stephen Harper.

Some opposition MPs have said the video clip attacking Rae shows a need to regulate third-party advertisers outside of elections.

The chance that Harper’s government would act on that suggestion seems highly remote, given the prime minister’s enmity to election spending rules and the advantage the pre-writ ads have conferred on his party in the past.

Original Article
Source: Ottawa Citizen 
Author: Glen McGregor 

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