In And Out and Round and Round

Canada's filthily-named scandal keeps on trucking.

The Globe and Mail’s Jeffrey Simpson delivers a refresher on the political climate in which the Conservatives launched their controversial “in-and-out” campaign funding ploy in the 2006, which resulted in Elections Canada laying charges against Tory campaign leaders last week. The Conservatives’ controversial attempt to pool local candidates coffers came at a crucial time when, hit with a series of scandals, “the Liberals were wounded, but they weren’t done … as the campaign wore on, the Conservatives were running out of money, or at least money they could spend under election financing rules. They needed every dollar they could find to buy more ads.” In Simpson’s hard-to-quantify narrative, the “in-and-out” affair takes on huge proportions, becoming the catalyst for a final push that brought the Conservatives to power.

In the Ottawa Citizen, Gerry Nicholls speculates that the Elections Canada charges could be part of a “vendetta” against the prime minister. Ten years ago when Harper and Nicholls were working at the National Citizen’s Coalition, the NCC was hit with similar charges by the elections watchdog, charges Nicholls says were “a sham” and petty retaliation for the NCC’s public criticism of Canada’s election laws. He believes the in-and-out charges could be the product of “unelected bureaucrats who may have an ideological axe to grind.” It’s an explosive accusation but of course it could be said that it stems from the fact that Nicholls himself has a decade-old axe to grind with Elections Canada. Round and around we go.

A Citizen editorial sternly rejects the Conservatives’ depiction of the affair as “a five-year-old accounting dispute” or “a difference of opinion.” “Those who are responsible for making our laws should show some respect for them,” says the Citizen. “A party running on an accountability platform should have steered well clear of any such ambiguity.” Even if you reject the idea, as the Citizen does, that the affair helped win the Tories the election, the Conservatives’ depiction of the charges isn’t heartening. It’s entirely plausible they acted in good faith, but surely allegations of election fraud are more serious than “an accounting dispute.”