In-and-Out Hearings: Send Pain Meds Urgently
If you haven't been doing so already, I'm recommending that readers who are or have been active participants in the electoral process check out the detailed coverage the Ottawa Citizen's Glen McGregor has been giving, on Twitter, of the Federal Court hearings into the so-called "in-and-out" accounting for advertising issue.
Poor Glen; he doesn't spend his days and nights pouring over minutiae in the Elections Act and the changing versions of the Candidate Manual the way many of us do. There's not exactly a mass audience for that kind of detailed coverage; but I'm guessing that if there's a niche audience, it probably overlaps with the readership of this blog quite a bit.
And for someone not steeped in all the background the way a practitioner might be, he's doing yeoman service covering the arguments being presented by each of the lawyers, the questioning by Judge Martineau, and filling in some of the background as required (although he's finding some of it a bit arcane, and jokes that he's willing to entertain sponsorships from suppliers of pain medication).
If you haven't explored Twitter before, just click on this link: http://twitter.com/CPCvsElxCan, and then scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the "More" button. Keep repeating until you get to his first post (or "tweet" as they're called), and then read upwards to get the detail in chronological order. The hearings have been on for two days already, and continue tomorrow morning. To follow them live, visit the same page, and reload it periodically.
This is the future of journalism, and if you've ever found yourself complaining about the lack of detail or substance in mainstream media coverage of a story you care about, then you'll be pleasantly surprised. Glen does a lot within the 140-character limit each "tweet" is confined to.
For some documentary background on the so-called "In-out-Out" accounting for advertising dispute between Elections Canada on the one hand, and the Conservative Party and official agents for 67 of its candidates in the 2006 general election on the other, please see my blogposts from the spring of 2008 where:
Poor Glen; he doesn't spend his days and nights pouring over minutiae in the Elections Act and the changing versions of the Candidate Manual the way many of us do. There's not exactly a mass audience for that kind of detailed coverage; but I'm guessing that if there's a niche audience, it probably overlaps with the readership of this blog quite a bit.
And for someone not steeped in all the background the way a practitioner might be, he's doing yeoman service covering the arguments being presented by each of the lawyers, the questioning by Judge Martineau, and filling in some of the background as required (although he's finding some of it a bit arcane, and jokes that he's willing to entertain sponsorships from suppliers of pain medication).
If you haven't explored Twitter before, just click on this link: http://twitter.com/CPCvsElxCan, and then scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the "More" button. Keep repeating until you get to his first post (or "tweet" as they're called), and then read upwards to get the detail in chronological order. The hearings have been on for two days already, and continue tomorrow morning. To follow them live, visit the same page, and reload it periodically.
This is the future of journalism, and if you've ever found yourself complaining about the lack of detail or substance in mainstream media coverage of a story you care about, then you'll be pleasantly surprised. Glen does a lot within the 140-character limit each "tweet" is confined to.
For some documentary background on the so-called "In-out-Out" accounting for advertising dispute between Elections Canada on the one hand, and the Conservative Party and official agents for 67 of its candidates in the 2006 general election on the other, please see my blogposts from the spring of 2008 where:
- I transcribed the list of affected Conservative candidates, along with links to the financial metrics page for each of their ridings (which then contains direct links to their financial returns at Elections Canada), followed by
- a listing of the candidates named in the affadavit of the organization director of the Conservative Party, as having met one of three criteria the CPC has argued were in wide use by other parties at the time (part I, part II, and part III of the so-called "Donald affadavit")
Labels: 39th (2006) General Election, Election Expenses, Election Finance
posted by The Pundits' Guide at
5:01 PM
10 Comments:
Poor guy. I'll sponsor a bottle of Advil his way, if somebody's already sending a care package...
That's nice of you Walker. I just started following your blog lately by the way. Keep up the good work.
I just noticed this blogpost PG- sandwished as it is between 2 of the typically text-extensive blogposts on nominations.
Fascinating stuff for us junkies. And like you said, a rare opportunity to get so much detail for a reporter.
I talked to Glen early on when he and Naumetz were first breaking this story, and struggling to grasp the morass of all the interelated threads of it.
Anyway, I'm into day 3 and thought I'd share a couple observations before I plow on.
The Conservative Party's case seems to rest entirely on the Chief Electoral Officer having to simply accept documents provided to them at face value.
That the CEO does not have the authority to determine what is a legitimate expense. [They can't really mean it that extreme, but thats what it reads like. And at the very least they mean he has EXTREMELY limited power of descretion on that.]
The judge presses a number of times on just how much the Conservative's lawyer means that. "What are all those auditors for?" Etc. Conservative's lawyer presses on doggedly regardless.
He persists that the power of investigation lies exclusively with the Commissioner of Elections Canada. I'm expecting to hear the EC lawyer follow up that one. The Commissioner can only proceed on cases referred by the CEO, and its at least implicit, if not explicit, in the Act, that the CEO would have to do some investigation to determine it was appropriate to turn the case over to the Commissioner. AND, where does the dogged lawyer think is the line of 'investigation'?
In the following comment I'm going to copy some of Glen's Twits that highlight that theme of the government's case.
Oldest Tweet at the bottom. So you really have to start at the bottom and read up for it to make sense. And I know even without looking back at my previous comment that I called them 'Twits'. Definitely an expression how foreign this is for me, and possibly letting my visceral opinion out of the bag. But here I am, eating them up.
Remember to start at the bottom and read up.
It all goes back to Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand's failure to meet legal standards when he rejected Tory expense claims in Apr '07. 6:48 AM Nov
,,,,
Prompted by judge, Décary says chief electoral officer has no jurisdiction at all to determine the reasonableness of an expense. 1:35 PM Nov 24th
,,,,
This is starting to get interesting. Decary is essentially arguing that Mayrand's statutory role wouldn't allow him to probe the in-and-out. 12:20 PM Nov 23
....
And the person who would do that is the Commissioner (of Elections, William Corbett), Decary says. It's not Mayrand's role. 12:19 PM Nov 23
Decary says person who gave false document could be prosecuted, for example. 12:18 PM Nov 23
Martineau interjects, raises hypothetical possibly of Mayrand knowing he'd been given a fake document. 12:15 PM Nov 23
"It's a document review. No
,,,,
Decary says that on receipt of documents, including auditor's report, the chief electoral officer must certify candidate's campaign return. 12:13 PM Nov 23
,,,,
Judge Martineau asks, are you saying there shouldn't be auditors working at Elections Canada? 11:54 AM Nov 23
Decary says Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand should have looked at only the documents provided to support Tory ad claims. 11:54 AM Nov 23
Decary returns to his narrative: what are the confines on the powers of the chief electoral officer? 11:50 AM Nov 23
,,,
Decary says candidates produced exactly the documents referred to under the law to back up their expense claims. 7:52 AM Nov 23
(This seems to be leading to the view that Mayrand's powers ended there; he couldn't start investigating as it he did to determine if legit) 7:49 AM Nov 23
The CEO has the right to ask an official agent for more documents if he's not satisfied, Decary says. 7:48 AM Nov 23
,,,
Chief Electoral Officer has no powers to audit; this should be done by an accountant under general accounting principles, Decary says. 6:47 AM Nov 23
The applicants have met the test to certify their expenses and Mayrand should have certifeed them, Decary says. 6:46 AM Nov 23
Decary [Conservatives lawyer] says Chief Electoral Officer's powers are set out by the elections law and he has no investigative powers. 6:45 AM Nov 23
Before I return to Glen's account of the proceedings, I'll offer my take for what its worth on what it looks like the Conservatives are trying to achieve.
As noted, I'm not a lawyer, but it sure looks like a pretty narrow case they are advancing. Since it is far from air tight, that sounds risky.
But they don't need to win this case- and expect they have no intention to try. As long as the case runs they get to create doubts about the case against them.
Already- who remembers this? If the Conservatives don't win now- and I doubt they expect to- there will be the appeal, and the time it takes to file that. And...
Where are we at in the process of Elections Canada taking its own [tentative?] action against the Conservative Party? I have forgotten if anything has happened on that since the police escorted sezure of the documents.
Where are we at in the process of Elections Canada taking its own [tentative?] action against the Conservative Party? I have forgotten if anything has happened on that since the police escorted sezure of the documents.
I think Ms. McIsaac says somewhere in there that the Commissioner of Elections is still conducting an investigation. But I understood that this legal maneuver was designed to force the CEO to recognize the expenditures as legitimately reportable, and therefore rebatable. So, it's the essence of the whole dispute.
In all honestly, I think it is in the interest of all the political parties to have the question of the distinction between national and candidate expenses litigated and ruled on. I can see cases where having a candidate in an ad (for example a regional star candidate) could be deemed a "national" expense, whereas having a focus on the national campaign and message might be the riding/ candidate's strategy.
I'm going to find the ruling very interesting ... and hope we can bribe Glen McGregor with acetominophen and ibuprofen to tweet the inevitable appeal, contrary to his first inclination ;-)
Still plowing my way through.
I'm using single malt to mellow it all. But unlike Glen, I can step away, and don't have to listen to those droning voices.
More interesting with the EC lawyer in the game. That lawyer for the Conservatives deserves an award from his bosses for carrying water on such a dunning case.
Judge Martineau says he needs this in writing in the event of an appeal of his decision in this case to Federal Court of Appeal or the Supremes.
7:26 AM Nov 26
(Just so you know, I am NOT going to live Tweet a Federal Court of Appeal case. Never.)
7:27 AM Nov 26
:)
Here's one in the category of funny desperate moves.
A lot of the EC lawyer's evidence is emails where various Conservative and ad agency officials talk about needing to find spending cap 'room'.
Lawyer # 1 for the Conservatives, Decary, got the slogging job of sticking to the very narrow case they wanted to talk about- no doubt sounding dense at times.
Lawyer # 2 got the job of trying to rebutt the EC lawyer. He opens by allowing that the emails about the spending caps 'don't look very good', and then proceeds to assert they are irrelevant.
Somehow he gets back to the substance of the emails- presumably the judge asked him a question.
Background is that you have to realize that in all the cases brought up it has already been well established that these are low spending third place campaigns.
Here is what Glens Tweet recounts of what lawyer # 2 said about how those discussions of the caps should be viewed... [having, as noted, earlier allowed they don't look good]:
"Of course spending caps were important." [The campaigns in question] couldn't spend money on advertising if they were at their limit.
7:41 AM Nov 27
Hamilton says emails asking candidates if they had cap room should be looked at this way.
7:42 AM Nov 27
:)
Amazing as always
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