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.
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
The same thing—wow!
Now, Ms. Redman brought up the riding of York South—Weston. Is that Judy Sgro's riding? Is she the representative in that one?
Conservative
As an Individual
I was the candidate for York South—Weston.
Conservative
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
Mr. Tonks, in the 2004 election.... She mentioned 2004 and said you were only able to spend however much money in 2004; it wasn't a great deal of money. But if we go back, because we want to bring up history and use that as a point of reference, the Conservative Party was a pretty young party then, in 2004, wasn't it?
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
You didn't have a lot of time to raise money, did you?
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
You didn't have the past experience to have drawn on a 60% rebate for expenses in 2004, did you?
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
That's correct.
So the candidate for the Liberal Party who held that riding in 2004 had a pretty substantial advantage over the Conservative candidate in that riding of York South—Weston, didn't he?
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
And he had that advantage again in 2006, didn't he, because the way the system worked, if they spent more money in 2004, they had more money to go to an election in 2006, didn't they?
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
That's correct.
So when the national party came to you and said, we would like to send you some assistance so that you can purchase advertising, which we will negotiate for you to promote your campaign, you got a value from that, didn't you?
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
Absolutely.
And you followed every rule as outlined by Elections Canada, didn't you?
As an Individual
We absolutely followed all the rules. We double-checked, triple-checked, and made sure that we crossed all the ts and dotted all the is.
Conservative
Dean Del Mastro Conservative Peterborough, ON
I agree with you. I've reviewed it. I looked at the documentation brought forward by Retail Media this morning. In fact, I went over it with them, and they confirmed, as Mr. Lemieux said, that appropriate tag lines were used on all advertising. So we know that according to Jean-Pierre Kingsley, the Chief Electoral Officer at the time, they followed all the rules as established in 1997 and all the actions followed by the parties of every single member of the jury—their party. That's how they operate; we've outlined that. We've given examples of every single party and how they operated.
Now, with York South—Weston, it's interesting—that's the example they gave us today, and we looked at this receipt, and the folks from Retail Media said it's identical—that the substance of this is identical. That is the amount that York South—Weston authorized them to spend on their advertising. And you received that media, didn't you?
Liberal
