11.11.2011 07:17 AM

Harper Conservatives plead guilty (updated)

Quote:

Crown attorney Richard Roy replied “these are serious violations of the act,” and the party’s guilty plea was an admission that its scheme was “illegal.”

In the future, whenever a Con raises the sponsorship mess – in which the Liberal Party was never found to have broken any law, by the by – throw this back in their face.

Your party broke the law, your party received the maximum penalty, your party was found to be corrupt.

Your party.

UPDATE: Regular Conservative commentator Gord Tulk is attempting to minimize these guilty pleas and sentences by suggesting sponsorship was worse. Here’s what I wrote, and still feel, about sponsorship.

50 Comments

  1. smelter rat says:

    Reformacon talking points: 1. they were cleared 2. it was an administrative error. They aren’t called cons for nothing.

  2. Marc L says:

    So, do you really believe this was more serious than the sponsorship scandal? Really?

    • Warren says:

      Yes I do. The money moved around here was far more. It involves sitting Conservative politicians. And it is a party pleading guilty.

      • Pete says:

        Not only the party but the very highest levels in the party.

        Even though it won’t pass the opposition ought to bring forth a non confidence vote in the house on the issue of stealing an election.

      • Marc L says:

        Wow! Maybe the Liberals should have pleaded guilty, don’t you think?

        • Warren says:

          That’s a stupid comment. The LPC was never charged with any offence, nor were any sitting Liberal politicians. The guilty pleas involved ad men who, for the most part, had been active Conservatives.

          Anyway, keep at it. The footage tells the story – and the result yesterday shows how the story ends.

          • Warren says:

            Gord, that’s BS from start to finish.

          • Ken says:

            “Those “ad men” were in the employ and under the direction of the LPC.”

            Ooooh, I’d love to have a cite for that.

            You have a cite for that, right?

          • Warren says:

            That’s bullshit. Chretien didn’t even get a section 13 notice. And I intend to let Chretien’s lawyers know that there’s a libel on Wikipedia – hopefully not put there by someone you know, Gord – so they can sue.

          • Warren says:

            Liars should be called to account. You supported the Mulroney and Harper libel suits, Gord. You are being disingenuous.

      • Warren says:

        Really, Gord? And the guilty pleas – add them up. What is the quantum of the sums that were alleged to have been stolen by former Conservative ad men?

  3. Pete says:

    CONTEMPT OF PARLIAMENT…TORIES GUILTY AS CHARGED
    ILLEGAL CAMPIAGN SPENDING……..TORIES GUILTY AS CHARGED

    What’s the next scandal for these liars and crooks

  4. Pete says:

    Wow Gord, you are well schooled in Tory lies and crass political speak

  5. Ken says:

    You missed the best part of Pierre Poilievre’s talking points! “In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out. In. And out.”

  6. AmandaM says:

    Gord, two wrongs don’t make a right. This is a discussion about your party’s misdeeds. It’s not a competition to see who is worse. Stop deflecting.

    • Warren says:

      Gord, if anyone in my party broke the law, I hope they are investigated and sent to jail for a very long time.

      You, however, are singularly incapable of ever saying the same thing. Your partisanship determines every word you write.

      It does you no service.

      • Philip says:

        Prime Minister Harper, at the very least, owes all Canadians a public apology for the actions of the Conservative Party under his leadership. That’s not too much to ask.

      • Ken says:

        I bet you a damn it’s too much to ask.

        Harper will never apologize for anything. Not now. Not ever. Responsibility is for other people. Responsibility is not his department.

      • Philip says:

        Agreed Ken. It doesn’t mean that it shouldn’t happen though. Prime Minister Harper wears this like a rotting albatross. As the leader of the Conservative Party while that party broke the law. It happened on Harper’s watch. Perhaps he thinks Canadians aren’t worth apologizing to?

    • Ken says:

      Who are EC biased towards?

    • Pete says:

      Gord, what you don’t get is the fact that the Tories used the money to corrupt an election process. They stole an election. There is nothing worse in a democracy.

      Tories are liars and liars are Tories…………still the operative words for your party.

  7. Philip says:

    The Conservative Party of Canada broke the law and received the highest maximum penalty. The Conservative Party of Canada has broken trust with every Canadian citizen. Prime Minister Stephen Harper must go before the Canadian people and apologize for the illegal acts committed by his party, while he was the leader. The buck stops with the Prime Minister.

  8. TheSilentObserver says:

    Is it right to be disappointed that nobody’s going to jail over this one? I don’t even know if the misdeed was that serious, but I was lead to believe that it was a possibility during the past election

  9. TheSilentObserver says:

    Is it right to be disappointed that nobody’s going to jail over this one? I don’t even know if the misdeed was that serious, but I was lead to believe during the last election that that was a possibility/

  10. Attack! says:

    Apart from stealing the then-close election by cheating the spending limits with this final $1+ million of ads in the final days of the campaign — and then racking up hundreds of billions in deficits since, even apart from stimulus-related infrastructure spending — we’d better get an honest reckoning of the true costs to the taxpayers for all of this:

    Both in the unwarranted rebates to the local ridings for the money they were claiming but hadn’t actually spent themselves for these national ad buys (not only what was actually paid out & never reclaimed before Elections Canada raised the flag, but also what they tried to get away with); and,

    especially for all the legal costs to the Crown and Elections Canada for the CPC pulling this, and then fighting it tooth and nail through so many appeals, before finally admitting guilt in this weasely plea bargain.

    That is, if there are any actual working journalists left, rather than snide apple-polishers like Ivison.

  11. Attack! says:

    ‘kay, I’ll see you and raise you on sleazy federal crime investigation related innuendo against sitting MPs, Gordon Drecko:.

    except this one’s far more nefarious, given how it puts the lie to the claim that the Cons eliminated corporate funding and only get small donations by individuals:

    Mad Max literally got a bag of cash ($5k, though they gave $1 back) from a shady character, and his riding association later issued receipts to pretend it came from up four other employees of his ‘Global Village’ company, to keep it under the limits:

    http://aptn.ca/pages/news/2011/11/03/the-part-about-the-fundraiser/

    The rest of the series on Michael Chamas, “the alleged “banker” for a Mohawk-based marijuana smuggling ring” is here:

    http://aptn.ca/pages/news/tag/operation-cancun/

  12. Glen says:

    While some Liberals may be able to tout that they were never found guilty of anything, public perception was that the Liberals were guilty. Paul Martin found that out.

    • Philip says:

      Prime Minister Stephen Harper, as leader of the Conservative Party, is equally guilty here. The leader of a political party is responsible for the actions of those who work for him. Unless you believe that personal responsibility doesn’t apply to Conservatives?

  13. GPAlta says:

    It is difficult to know how much of the sponsorship money was actually wasted. Ad agencies make excessive profits from private sector clients as well, and they also use deceptive practices to obtain private sector contracts. But some advertising agencies also generate results for their clients even under those circumstances. At the beginning of the program, separatism was very popular, now it is virtually dead. It could turn out to be the best money that Canada has ever wasted.

  14. Consick says:

    Conservatism is like a fart in the room:
    It’s vacant, hot air that is generally offensive.
    It’s visceral, caused by indigestion and generally the result of a steady bad diet of unhealthy ideas.
    The one who let it rip clearly has no respect for those around them.
    No matter how many in the room disapprove, they all have to put up with it and it kind of distracts them from what they really wanted to talk about.
    It kills the mood and people just want to get out of there.
    Even after the stench wafts away, the horrible memory lingers and no one wants to go back in.
    If democracy is that room, then it’s no wonder that no one is showing up any more except the idiots who love the smell of their own fetid stink.
    Conservatism is like a fart in the room.

  15. ed says:

    All that a guilty verdict for the Conservative Party of Canada says to you is that the Liberal Party is like a man who murdered his wife and her lover and then got off?

    I love when Tories come to this board and bring along their Con logic.

    • Jan says:

      Maybe we should work on the Cons killing democracy using a Dr. Murray/Michael Jackson analogy.

      • Attack! says:

        You mean manslaughter, or professional negligence?

        In this case, it _does_ seems true that the plurality of Canadians in our dying body politic have been injected themselves with the toxic substances the Cons have been providing… with a little extra encouragement from that last flurry of illegally funded In & Out ads which enable the CPC to first get its hooks into us on January 23, 2006.

  16. Anne Peterson says:

    Is there not even one conservative member of the senate of commons who will speak out against the corruption in their party. Not even one decent, honourable member who is not in denial about their manipulation and trickery and lies. They are not innocent and all the empty babbling about what the liberals did does not make them innocent. They have lost the respect of Canadians and paying little people to write justifications for them on all media threads doesn’t fool anyone. What a pathetic bunch.

    • MCBellecourt says:

      Those big fat pensions are one hell of an incentive to lay low and keep quiet.

      My question is this–Remember Retail Media? Remember those “receipts” they claimed weren’t theirs? The ones with the doctored figures?

      There was a fraud committed there. What the hell happened to those charges?

      Warren, do you know anything about what happened there?

      • MCBellecourt says:

        Nothing would surprise me anymore–not even the possiblility that the prosecuting side was either inept….

        …or other….

        Questions, questions…and more questions. Keep on it, big guy.

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