The Conservatives' Dirty Campaign

Now that the gloves have come off, we get to see the true class of our Con pals. The Conservative Party of Canada hosts a variety of gutter quality pages devoted to smears and attacks not only on opposition leaders and candidates but stooping to the base level of going after private citizens.

Note if you will Dionbook a Facebook mock-up that sneers at blogs and bloggers Scott Tribe, The Liberal Bag, A BCer in Toronto, Far and Wide, Morton's Musings, Red Tory, What Do I Know Grit, The Wingnuterer and Jason Cherniak. When Mr Harper made his prophetic surmise that the campaign might be nasty, perhaps he had previewed his own party's efforts, avian feces and all. Granted the political landscape has changed somewhat in the last few years as digital proliferation has allowed more individual citizens a greater voice. But this would be analogous to a politician of days gone by going after a private citizen writing letters to the editor and holding them up to public ridicule. This is unseemly behaviour for a government to put forth. This is unworthy of our elected representatives and a blight on Canada's political landscape. If this is the contempt they have for the citizenry now, what depths will they plumb should they achieve a majority? These sites might seem an attempt to be clever but they clearly point out that the federal government is making a political enemies list and keeping an eye on contrarians both public and private.

There are links to a raft of other Conservative Party of Canada owned and operated smear sites. Jason Cherniak is also centered out for a full page of personal belittlement. That special honour is bestowed upon him as head of a Liberal blogging aggregator and right beside Cherniak is a page of auto-fellation for The Blogging Tories' Stephen Taylor. Perhaps Jason should roll up his lawyering sleeves and get litigious on someone. After all, petty lawsuits are all the rage now that fat Steve (hey if this is the level of discourse coming from the governing party, why the hell should anyone else extend the olive branch of decorum to these sleaze merchants?) has taken to suing his political opponents to try and shut them up.

I will note for my own interest that there are some links at the bottom of the page. First among their current "Reality Checks"...

Will the Dion Liberals respect the law and court their settlement with Green Shift Inc. as an election expense?

Interesting. Will the Conservative Party of Canada give a fair accounting of the likely millions of 10% fliers that they have been using to conduct a taxpayer funded campaign and declare the cost of the creation, printing and mailing (at full market price of a stamp each) as election expenses? For the record, I will be drafting a formal complaint to Elections Canada concerning the fliers I picked up today, one contains the following text:

Roughly every three minutes, a Canadian has a car stolen. The costs add up fast, and Canadians are picking up the tab of more than $1 billion every year. These are staggering statistics for car owners to swallow. Whether joyriding hoodlums take the car for a thrill-ride or criminal gangs steal it for cash, car theft is an assault on the pocketbooks and peace of mind of innocent Canadians. Previous Liberal governments were soft on crime, standing idle while Canadians picked up the huge cost of car theft. This Conservative Government is taking real action. We have introduced tough new amendments to the Criminal Code that will prevent thugs and gangs from flaunting (sic) the law without penalty. The free ride for car thieves is over.

Now apart from being a misleading attempt to give the impression that previous Liberal governments didn't punish car thieves, it might pass the smell test of being at least marginally about legislative information. However, this flier was retrieved from the recycling box in the mailroom of my building. I've made a habit of picking up the discarded fliers and sending them back from whence they came. I generally give them a cursory glance, seen one pile of partisan crap, you've seen them all. Right? Not so much. The relatively innocuous flier was one of only three among the twenty I collected that had that particular text. The remaining 85 % of the 10% fliers had the following text:

International car theft rings are becoming increasingly sophisticated, predatory and dangerous. Yet for too many years, previous Liberal governments refused to get tough on these dangerous criminal gangs. Canadians deserve better than that. They deserve tough new laws that will protect their cars and keep insurance costs under control. The Conservative Government is tightening Canada's borders for illegal cars and introducing tough new laws that promise serious jail time for car thieves, smugglers, and organized crime rings. In the next election, the choice Canadians face is clear. They can choose between weak leadership, broken promises, and idleness from the Stephane Dion Liberals or real action and real results from Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the Conservative Government.

Now that my friends, is fucking bullshit. That is blatant, partisan campaigning and it is being paid for by the Canadian taxpayer. The Conservatives are the daddy warbucks party, coffers full to overflowing and yet they still have a pathological need to cheat the system, to cheat the Canadian taxpayer and pull a fast one. Dion's Liberals settled a lawsuit over the name of a proposed policy plank and these scumbags want it claimed as an election expense. Yet these are the same cheating In 'n' Out rats that Elections Canada is investigating, that the ethics committee is investigating and whose headquarters the RCMP had to search to counter stonewalling and obstruction. It takes a mighty big belly full of gall to demand that the Liberals declare a legal settlement as an election expense when they are clearly cheating, abusing privilege and making you and I foot their bill.

I have never seen the like. The Conservative Party of Canada has plunged this nation into the depths of dishonour in governance. I am ashamed to think that these cranks, fools and thieves stand a very good chance of improving their fortunes and are willing to do so using the most tawdry, dirty politicking imaginable. When I complete the draft of my letter to Elections Canada I will post the text and all salient information and I encourage others to keep an eye for similar abuses and cheating. We deserve better than this sort of callow, manipulative and dangerous campaigning from any party. Shame on Mr Harper and the Conservatives, the puffin's isn't the only shit they've been flinging.

All emphasis mine.