Evidence of meeting #47 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 conservative.
A recording is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Gary Goodyear Conservative Cambridge, ON
Thank you. I was on a real roll there. I know Mr. Martin's head was turning red.
But let me just finish up, because clearly what I have indicated, based on Elections Canada documentation, is that Ms. Chow apparently wasn't even aware of this province-wide regional buy that was paid for, invoiced, and done all at the national party level, Pat, and she invoiced it and expensed it locally.
Here's the problem, and I want to ask you—
Conservative
Gary Goodyear Conservative Cambridge, ON
I'm sorry. I won't do that. You're correct. My apologies.
There's no documentation submitted to Elections Canada, but despite that, on this very unusual limited documentation, Elections Canada accepted the validity of this regional media buy as an NDP local campaign election expense, without question.
Why do you think Elections Canada chose to accept exactly—through you, Mr. Chair—what that NDP member just said was illegal? Why is it illegal for us apparently, but the NDP did exactly the same thing and it's not illegal for them?
I want to tell you one other thing, Mr. Lowry. We asked that Libby Davies, who did even worse than this, to be here as a witness. These guys voted against it. Do you have any comment on that?
As an Individual
I think the only reason is that the Conservative Party looked at all the ridings that traditionally didn't spend enough cap. Every riding has a cap. My cap to spend is $80,000.
I think when the Conservative Party went through every riding, we determined which ones didn't have cap and we said to all the ridings, “If you're not going to spend your cap, let's put it in more advertising. If you do get the 10%, you can compete the next time.” So we went through every riding that was possible in the Conservative Party.
I think the NDP probably only did a few of them, maybe because under the rules election advertising is kind of flux. Maybe it's because part of the 2006 election had something to do with advertising.
We're supposed to be even squeakier clean than everybody else, but it seems to me that we did it more because we followed the rules and we looked into the long-term interest of every riding across Canada. I think if the ridings received their 10%, they would be much more competitive and we'd have better democracy across Canada.
Conservative
Gary Goodyear Conservative Cambridge, ON
In that case, it was obviously much better planning, but do you think it's fair that Elections Canada has singled out the Conservative Party and ignored what is exactly the same thing by the other parties? That's a yes or no, because I have limited time left, I'm sorry.
Conservative
Gary Goodyear Conservative Cambridge, ON
Thank you, Mr. Lowry.
I'm going to pass the rest of my questions to my colleagues.
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank everybody for coming.
Mr. Lowry, did you find it intimidating when you received a summons from Mr. Szabo? You must have.
As an Individual
Let's see, I'm chair of a community centre, I've been on a citizens police committee for 10 years, I work for a bank, I have my own trust fund, I do a variety of things. With most of those things, if you do illegal things, you're off. My job is financial services. We try to stay within the law.
Conservative
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
You've never been arrested or anything like that. So when you get something like this from the chair of the committee, that's pretty scary, isn't it?
Conservative
Liberal
Karen Redman Liberal Kitchener Centre, ON
Thank you.
I would like to add my voice of thanks to all of you for coming. I think we all recognize this is a very serious issue, and official agents are an integral part of making sure every candidate stays within the limits.
Mr. Lowry, I wanted to ask you, because there has been some chatting among other people who were subpoenaed, were you asked not to appear today by any representative of the Conservative Party?
As an Individual
I won't say “not to”, because nobody's going to say you're not supposed to appear. I would say, because I swore an oath, it wasn't necessarily encouraged.
