I will be making these arguments outside of this committee, so silencing them here will not silence them completely. I will move on beyond the points I have raised, to new and better ones.
I see that has elicited some sort of response.
I want to read an e-mail I received, which is pertinent to this particular amendment. It says:
Subject: Radio co-op proposal.
Dear Lower Island Managers:
If each campaign can commit to providing us with $2000 for a total of $6000, we [the national party???] could match it for a total buy of $12,000. The ads would be tagged equally--i.e., would refer to each candidate--and would mean a $4000 expense under each ceiling ($2000 from the campaign, $2000 in-kind from the Federal Party). We would arrange bookings with a number of stations...for the last week of the campaign.
Mr. Chair, I've just read an e-mail from a British Columbia campaign organizer who describes intricately how national party money can be transferred to local campaigns, and then those local campaigns can run national advertising, and then that national advertising can be booked as a local expense, making it eligible for a rebate and allowing it not to count against the national limit.
Let me read another e-mail.
Hi, Phyllis,
We are told by communications folks in BC that these were radio ads with the Candidate's personal tag on the end - therefore a local expense to be reported under the Candidate's expense ceiling, regardless of who pays. For rebate purposes, we were asked to bill each campaign - in the case of VanEast, $2,612.00
The good news is that the Federal Party will transfer $2,600 to the Federal Riding Association as we agreed to pay for the ads.
That was an e-mail from the national NDP bookkeeper to the local campaign financial agent for Libby Davies, the NDP member in the riding of Vancouver East. So this gives you an example here.
The point that some will make is that she's not a public office holder, so she can do whatever she wants. Elections Canada laws don't apply to her because she's not a public office holder. Some might say that. But, Chair, as you know, they would be wrong to suggest that. And I know that you will not go any further in contorting yourself into pretzels in order to deny an honest, legitimate debate here about how other parties conducted themselves during the election campaign, the one that just went by or others previous.
I have just given you a series of examples from all the parties who have engaged in exactly the same practices in which the Conservative Party engaged.
Even if you accept the chair's flawed logic that we can only study--