Pubdate: Tue, 19 Aug 2008
Source: Vancouver Sun (CN BC)
Copyright: 2008 The Vancouver Sun
Contact: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/letters.html
Website: http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/477
Author: Randy Shore

MPS LAUNCH FORMAL COMPLAINT OVER CONSERVATIVE FLYERS

Rules Forbid Using Free Postage To Send Out Campaign Material

Flyers sent out by the federal Conservative party last week violate 
rules that forbid members of Parliament from using their free postage 
privileges to send out campaign material, opposition MPs say.

People in east Vancouver, Richmond, Port Alberni and across the 
country were blitzed last week with pamphlets touting the Tories' 
tough-on-crime approach to illegal drugs.

According to rules distributed to every MP by the office of the 
Speaker of the House, such flyers may not contain "provincial, 
municipal or local election campaign material." Nor can the flyers 
request "re-election support."

But the Conservative flyer includes a depiction of an election ballot 
with the names of four federal party leaders and an arrow pointing to 
Prime Minister Stephen Harper. The question above the ballot reads 
"Who do you think is on the right track on crime?" The flyer asks the 
recipient to fill out the ballot and mail it back to the House of 
Commons, again free of charge.

NDP ethics critic Pat Martin has lodged a formal complaint with the 
Office of the Speaker after reviewing the drug-crime flyer for The 
Vancouver Sun.

"That is way over the line," Martin said, adding that the New 
Democrats have never depicted a ballot in MP mail-outs. "The 
Conservatives are really thumbing their nose at the rules."

MPs are allowed to use franking -- free postage -- to send out four 
householder flyers each year to their constituents. They are 
additionally allowed to send out a number of flyers up to a maximum 
of 10 per cent of the number of households in their constituencies, 
so-called "10-percenters."

Most MPs would be allowed to send 4,000 to 5,000 10-percenters under the rules.

The 10-per-cent flyers have been historically used by opposition MPs 
to promote their parties' policies and agendas, but were not often 
used by governing parties that had large majorities in the House and 
large advertising budgets, according to Ted McWhinney, a former 
Liberal MP and constitutional law professor.

In recent years all the parties assumed some control over the content 
and distribution of 10-percenters by having MPs pool their 
10-percenter franking privileges once a month to send out large-scale 
mailings outside the MPs' constituencies.

McWhinney calls that practice a by-product of the "increasingly 
imperial nature of the prime minister's office." The parties have 
taken so much control over the message that MPs deliver to their 
constituents that it renders them "ineffectual," he said.

"When Canadians realize that communications from their MPs are really 
just junk mail they will simply throw them away," warned McWhinney, 
who wrote all of his 10-percenters personally during his two terms as 
MP for Vancouver Quadra.

Liberal MP Mark Holland has also launched a complaint about the 
flyers, claiming they are too partisan. "The Conservative Party is 
using taxpayers' money to fund the printing and mailing of electoral 
material," said Holland in a release.

But complaints about partisan content may not go far, according to 
Colette Dery, a spokeswoman in the Office of the Speaker. "It is 
expected that the content will be partisan," she said. "What it can't 
be is a solicitation for a membership in a party or for fundraising 
or for re-election."

The Conservative drug-crime flyer was distributed across the country, 
according to Conservative party spokesman Ryan Sparrow. He did not 
know how many of the flyers were printed. "Everything that goes out 
from the House of Commons goes through House of Commons Printing 
Services," Sparrow said. "They would not print anything that violated 
the rules."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom