Evidence of meeting #48 for Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics in the 39th Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was campaign.
A recording is available from Parliament.
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Thank you. That's not a point of order; it's a matter of debate.
Thank you, Ms. Dixon, for helping to clarify it. It has come up several times during the examination, so thank you for helping to clarify it.
Mr. LeBlanc, please.
August 13th, 2008 / 11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you to the witnesses for coming this morning.
Mr. Kumpf, perhaps I could begin with you. I'm interested in what Mr. Martin asked questions about a few minutes ago, the whole business of allocating different amounts to different ridings. In the documents that were filed with the court in Toronto in application for the search warrant, there was an e-mail from Mike Donison to you, dated December 14, 2005, at 10:36 a.m. I gave a copy to your counsel. I want to make sure you have a copy of that document so that we know what document we're talking about.
I want to read you what Mr. Donison said to you in the e-mail. At the top of the page, it says:
Andrew: Just so I fully understand- I am still to work with the column marked “Contribution”, and that is what we will be billing each of these candidates- the amount in this column, despite the fact that the actual media buy for that region will be less?
I will assume that is the case, and that this is the final list. Please let me know otherwise.
I'm wondering what you responded to Mr. Donison. I'm surprised that Mr. Donison is asking you for advice on how to allocate money to these ridings.
11:55 a.m.
As an Individual
I'm glad you brought that up.
I have two points. One is that when I was reviewing or preparing for the appearance in this meeting, I saw that the excerpt from appendix 36—and paragraph 194 on page 47, I believe—was misattributed as being from me to Mike Donison. In actual fact, as I think we've pointed out here, it was from Mike Donison to me.
Now, in respect of that, his question from the chart that we supplied, which had the ridings and the medium and the dollars, was whether or not it should be the contribution. My response to that—which wasn't included in appendix 36—was that, no, he was looking at the wrong column. He needed to look at the column that was the media buy, the amount that we had transferred, and not the contribution. I was not suggesting that he utilize the contribution, which would have been more than the actual media buy.
We have copies of that in both languages, because it was confusing from the application, just showing my response, sir, if—
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
Okay, we'd be happy to see that afterwards, Mr. Kumpf.
Again, I thank you for the answer, but my concern is with what appears to be the arbitrary way in which amounts were allocated, and I think Mr. Martin was getting to this before he ran out of time, in the sense that in one riding a large amount of money was allocated, and in another riding, a neighbouring riding or a riding very close, which I would argue is in the same media market—but I'm not the advertising experts you are—a much small amount was allocated. You have said you didn't come up with any of those allocations, that those were given to you by the Conservative Party. Is that correct?
11:55 a.m.
As an Individual
What I did, sir, with Mike Donison, who supplied the potential contributing ridings, is that I looked at them and analyzed them to see if it was feasible for them to get signal or coverage from the TV stations that the transfer was for. So—
11:55 a.m.
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
I don't want to interrupt you, but you could argue that neighbouring ridings would have the same signal, presumably. Right?
11:55 a.m.
As an Individual
Sir, I don't know what decision-making was in form between the party and the candidates, or what levels per candidate were going in, as there was correspondence between the party and the candidates, and then to us, on what ones could be involved. I believe they were acting on behalf of those candidates.
I can't comment on why the budget disparities--
Noon
Liberal
Dominic LeBlanc Liberal Beauséjour, NB
No, I appreciate that. Thank you.
I have a final question perhaps for Ms. Dixon.
In the document that you gave us this morning, that large list of ridings outside the province of Quebec and the example of an individual riding, there seems to be a lot of confusion. I think you, Ms. Dixon, explained the four different invoices, and so on, that your company had prepared; but I'm interested in comments that you apparently made to an investigator with the election commissioner's office, Mr. Ron Lamothe. In paragraph 75 of his affidavit, which again was used to obtain the search warrant, he said:
As an example of the invoices filed with Elections Canada, I showed the representatives of Retail Media an invoice in the amount of $39,999.91 (Appendix 23) filed by the candidate for the electoral district of York South--Weston, who was one of the 14 candidates (paragraph 37) contacted by Elections Canada for additional information.... Upon viewing the document, which bears the letterhead of Retail Media, Ms. Dixon speculated that this invoice must have been altered or created by someone, because it did not conform to the appearance of the invoices sent by Retail Media to the Conservative Party of Canada with respect to the media buy.
I'm just wondering if Mr. Lamothe got it wrong or if your comments today are different from what you said to Mr. Lamothe, which he then swore in an affidavit before the court in Ontario.
Noon
As an Individual
I think we addressed that in our opening statements, where we said that we had provided a group invoice with a number of ridings on the same invoice and that it appeared someone had taken that invoice and produced only that information for that riding. When they showed us that invoice only, we did not have this summary invoice in front of us. All we knew was that it looked different from how this looked, and that was the extent of our communication.
Noon
As an Individual
If I could just add something briefly, that was the time in April when the press reports came out that mischaracterized our position. We pointed out to Elections Canada that they had it right—which is in the letter we've provided for you today—in another part of their report. So there's a paragraph in there that basically reflects our belief.
Noon
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you very much, Chair.
Thank you for being here today.
Now that we're discussing advertising, there are a couple of issues I'd like to bring up. The first is just regarding advertising content.
I'm a candidate, I ran in the last election, and it's up to me to decide what advertising content I should run in my riding. It's not up to Elections Canada to determine what should be in my advertising. In my riding, if I decide to do an advertisement on farmers, it's not for Elections Canada to say, “Well, Mr. Lemieux, you can't include farmers in your advertisement.” If I want to put a photo of my family in there, I can do so.
The reason this is important is that if I choose to run an advertisement in my riding with Stephen Harper and the national campaign issues because that's what I as the candidate determine to be the most effective advertising for me and my riding, Elections Canada has no business saying, “Well, Mr. Lemieux, you can't do that.” They have no mandate to do that, they have no responsibility to do so, and they have no mechanism to do so. This has actually been backed up by Jean-Pierre Kingsley, and Jean-Pierre Kingsley was the Chief Electoral Officer during the 2006 election.
To echo what Mr. Goodyear had said, the content of the ad is not what's important; it's the tag line, whose name is at the end of that ad. That is why I'm glad you're here and I'm glad we have your statement in front of us, where you confirm in your letter of January 15 and state very specifically:
I further confirm that:
Appropriate tag lines were used in all advertisements, identifying on whose behalf the advertisement was authorized.
So the tag lines were there, and that is the most important aspect of these advertisements.
The fact that your primary client was the national party I don't think is of surprise to any of the other parties here, because they do the same thing. And I don't think it's of surprise to Canadians, because as you said, time is short and it makes sense to have one client buy as much media as they can buy quickly during a short campaign. Therefore, that you would be dealing with the national party and the national party would then deal with individual candidates, to me, makes perfect sense. Quite frankly, I would be astounded to know that my colleagues disagreed with that. Anyway, I wanted to bring up that point about tag lines.
On this business about the value and that the numbers are different, the opposition seems to be very uncomfortable with that. I'd like to ask a few questions on that, because you said you did provide advice, for example, on which TV stations covered which areas.
Is it possible that different TV stations have different areas of coverage?
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Absolutely. Thank you. I happen to agree with you. CTV has a zone of coverage; CBC has a zone of coverage. They might overlap in one riding and not in another riding. It just depends on the riding. It depends on the TV station. That would account for a difference in the values, but there's more, of course.
Is it possible that, this being a competitive market, different TV stations have different prices for air time?
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
I agree. Thank you very much. Again, that's another reason we would have different pricing to different candidates.
Third, is it possible that different TV stations, or actually, if I can be even more specific, the same TV station, would have different pricing for different time slots? In other words, it's going to cost me more to run it just before the six o'clock news than to run it at two o'clock in the morning. Is it possible that the price of that slot is different, depending on what time I choose during the day?
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Okay. So going back to the opposition's baseless claims about why the pricing is different, I've just come up with three excellent scenarios that actually exist in the industry as to why the pricing would be different.
I do want to touch on one last thing. You said you used similar invoicing practices as you do for the private sector. In fact, you made a couple of references to franchising. So I just want to ask, is the way you billed the Conservative Party the way you would have billed, for example, somebody in the private sector? You have a single invoice here, but within that invoice you have different franchises listed, etc.
12:05 p.m.
Conservative
Pierre Lemieux Conservative Glengarry—Prescott—Russell, ON
Thank you very much. You've answered all my questions.
In using up the final seconds, what I want to really show here is that the advertising content, of course, belongs to me as the candidate. I can choose whatever themes I decide are important for me. The tag line is important, and you've confirmed that the tag line was on all these different advertisements or advertising buys. You've also confirmed that there are many factors that would influence the differences in invoicing, and that this is all part of normal competitive private-sector-type business.
I thank you for your time.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Thank you very much.
I wanted to get a clarification. On the detailed invoice, at the bottom we have federal GST. In some jurisdictions there actually is not a GST but a harmonized sales tax, which includes federal and provincial. Was there any of that? How would that have been handled?
12:05 p.m.
As an Individual
The harmonized tax is within the cost of media. For QST it's separate, but for HST it's in the cost of the media.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
12:05 p.m.
As an Individual
The GST is separate. That's how we do our invoices, correct.
12:05 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Paul Szabo
Because this was broken out for the candidates, how would they know, as opposed to just putting GST here? It caused me some concern because, as you know, in the GST system, if you are not the end user you get a tax credit, and you really need to know and have the details about what the actual GST paid is. It looks like we've got—