The National Post Is Right...On A Number Of Things

* It is a silly law and should be repealed.
* The fact that the liberals did it should have been a red flag if the conservatives actually did it.
* Whether they did it or not will be decided by a judge, not the media or left wing losers, but the damage has been done.

Conservatives knew the rules

National Post Published: Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The law under which Elections Canada is investigating the Conservative Party of Canada for alleged overspending on advertising in the last election is a silly and undemocratic law. It should be repealed. But until it is, it remains the law of the land. If Conservatives knowingly violated it, they should suffer the legal consequences.

During the 2006 election, spending on national advertising for all the major parties was capped at $18-million. While that may sound like an enormous sum, it is not. As a point of reference, Senator Barack Obama spent nearly $3-million just this past weekend for television, radio and newspaper ads in one state alone -- Pennsylvania-- and that was for a primary, not a general election.

Elections Canada alleges that when the Conservatives reached their allowable limit they disguised an addition $1-million in national commercials as local advertising. Individual candidates have separate advertising limits and some Conservative candidates had room left in their local allotments. So, Elections Canada believes, the Tory war room gave individual candidates money and asked them to buy space for national commercials with it.

When the Liberals were in power and flush with campaign cash, they engaged in similar practices, known as an "in-and-out" scheme. The key is to edit the national ads enough that the party and its candidates can argue convincingly they are no longer national spots, but really local ones. The national campaign also may not redirect funds to its local candidates specifically for the purpose of buying air time or newspaper space for these ads.

Did the Conservatives violate the Elections Act in this manner? In order to obtain its warrant to search Conservative party headquarters late last week, Elections Canada provided a judge with 700 pages of evidence claiming to show that was what the party did. Ultimately, though, any determination of guilt will be left up to a judge.

In the mean time, it needs to be said that this is a useless and undemocratic law. Like most of our campaign finance laws, it is based on the false premise that severely restricting how much politicians may raise and spend to get elected will take the influence of Big Money out of our elections and create a level playing field for all parties and candidates.

There is little evidence that such limits produce the benefits claimed for them. Indeed, in the United States, which has the most expensive elections in the world, for every free-spending campaign that wins thanks to its ability to saturate the airwaves there are almost two more that lose.

What is required to make elections "fair" is transparency -- letting voters see who is contributing to which campaigns, and how much. Any restrictions greater than that and the law not only insults the ability of voters to make up their minds for themselves, it also limits candidates' freedom to express themselves as often as they wish, even at risk of turning off voters by being too much in their faces.

In its enthusiastic and vigorous pursuit of the Conservatives over this possible infraction, Elections Canada is also running the risk of appearing to be exercising an old grudge. When Stephen Harper was president of the National Citizens Coalition, he twice had bitter run-ins with Elections Canada officials over limits on advertising by advocacy groups during elections and the premature posting of election results on the Internet. Since becoming prime minister, Mr. Harper has also clashed with election regulators over their decision to permit veiled women to vote in last fall's federal byelections.

When Liberal and CBC camera crews showed up outside Conservative headquarters last week just minutes after Mounties arrived to serve the warrant, it caused a lot of people to wonder whether Elections Canada tipped media and the opposition for the purpose of embarrassing their old foe, Mr. Harper.

But as poor as the campaign advertising law is and as much as the Conservatives' targeting under its provisions may have personal motivations, the Conservatives knew the rules going in and now need to show that they abided by them or accept their punishment.