Original “In and Out” scheme was Bloc Quebecois? *
Posted by Sandy on 30th April 2008
So the layers of the Elections Canada campaign spending issue are being peeled away and, along with those layers is the obvious hypocrisy in some federal political circles. Yesterday I wrote about Andrew Coyne’s article in Macleans with respect to opposition parties hyperventilating on the so-called “In and Out” scheme. Now, today, we are hearing about the Bloc Quebecois — the party who yesterday put forward a motion to support Elections Canada.
Well, if you want further evidence of in and out schemes, read this piece by Elizabeth Thompson in the Montreal Gazette. She writes:
When the controversy first erupted about the Conservative “in and out” transfers between their local and national campaigns, the term had a vaguely familiar ring to it. Listening today to one Bloc Québécois MP after another get up to denounce “in and out” financing and praise Elections Canada, those bells started to ring even louder.
Finally it came to me. The term “in and out” in connection with election financing was first used by my former colleague and classmate Andrew McIntosh to describe a lucrative arrangement cooked up by the Bloc to take advantage of a loophole in election financing laws to extract the maximum amount of taxpayer-funded refunds from Elections Canada.
I seem to recall that the Bloc weren’t as great fans of Elections Canada then as they seem to be now. Who knows. Perhaps the Bloc is now denouncing a practice it inspired.
While the hypocrisy is truly breathtaking, I am glad the truth is finally coming out.
* Update: Related. Tories blast Elections Canada.
[...]
Posted in Federal Politics, Opposition Parties | 3 Comments »