Canadians may beat us to the polls
Despite four planned and payed for by-elections scheduled for September 8th, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper is tipped to call a snap election this week as his minority government struggles to get any work done. This would infuriate the Greens, who have a realistic chance of picking up one of the seats in the by-elections next week. Green candidate Mike Nagy is now likely to win the Guelph seat. Mike would be Canada’s first Green MP. An October general election would render the by-elections unecessary.
Meanwhile, Harper’s conservatives continue their ongoing stouche with Elections Canada, reluctantly promising to abide by the rules on campaign financing.
He says the Conservatives will “operate within the law as we understand it in consultation with Elections Canada.”
The agency alleges the Tories transferred national funds in and out of campaign accounts for 67 candidates during the last federal election to skirt the party’s national spending limit.
It says the practice allowed the party to exceed its national campaign spending limit by $1.1 million and enabled local candidates to claim rebates on expenses they hadn’t actually incurred.
Harper is expected to call a mid-October election next week.
It all sounds hauntingly familiar, with the names changed to protect the innocent and guilty alike. And who said that we don’t need more transparency on how campaign monies are handled?
August 30th, 2008 at 9:01 pm
I would read it differently. This says to me that the spending cap didn’t work, you can find a good accountant to get you round anything. If they hadn’t had a cap they wouldn’t have needed to juggle funds, they could have run it all through the campaign account and declared the lot, thus being more transparent.
August 30th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
Well, good on Stephen Haprper
I wish we had a party in power which would go to the polls when it can’t govern effectively.
We should have had an election called in February for April
August 31st, 2008 at 12:35 am
Hang on a second, doesn’t the Canada Elections Act prohibit Stephen Harper from having an election prior to October 19, 2009 unless there is a vote of no confidence? Only thing that could trigger a vote of no confidence is if the BQ stop propping up the Conservatives.
August 31st, 2008 at 11:19 am
Harper appears ready to disregard his own law for fixed terms of 4 years. Alongside the campaign funding rort earlier this year, ignoring the law seems to be a habit the Canadian conservatives have picked up from their brethren to the South in the US.
Good news today is that Canada now has its first federal Green Party MP: Blair Wilson, a former federal Liberal Party MP from British Columbia.
http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/488157