Stephane Dion's fundraising email: A rebuttal
Jason Cherniak defends the parliamentary assistant and the use of a government email account to send out invitations to a fundraising even for Stephane Dion:
Email is free people!
Tonight was the Dion fundraiser in Toronto. It is the first time that I have been involved in organizing such a thing and I was quite happy with the result. Dion did well, we had great attendance and I enjoyed the celebration that followed. I even learned that a former cabinet minister in attendance (not Dion) used to babysit my mother!
At the moment, though, I am pissed off. It is because I just read this crock of $#!@. I am sick and tired of politically minded people pretending to be "Angry" because of completely meaningless tripe. Who the hell cares if an Ottawa staffer sends a political email from a Parliamentary account. For godssake; they work for POLITICIANS. Of course they are going to send political emails!
[Note that the fundraiser Jason attended is different from the one refered to in the email being debated here. Thanks to Jason for the correction.]
If you recall, I opened my post with a comment that I am also not concerned about a trivial email here or there.
But there's more:
For the record, I have not discussed this with my MP and he will make his own decision of what to do. However, if I were an MP I would insist that staffers use their parliamentary accounts for all political emails. I would then go out and defend this policy against those who are inane enough to complain.
In my posting, I left out the "To" list because I wasn't interested in where the email was going, just where it was coming from. But maybe that was a mistake.
This was not an email to one or two or a dozen people, each of them a personal acquaintance of the staffer in question, each being asked if they had planned to go to the event, so maybe they should meet somewhere and head out together, ya-da ya-da.
This was an email sent to a series of official distributions lists containing literally hundreds of names:
To: - SEN SENATORS' OFF/BUR. SENATEURS
To: - BQ DePUTeS/MEMBERS
To: - BQ: ADJOINTS
To: - CONSERVATIVE ASSISTANTS CONSERVATEURS
To: - CONSERVATIVE MEMBERS/DePUTeS CONSERVATEURS
To: - INDEPENDENT MEMBERS/DePUTeS INDePENDANTS
To: - LIBERAL ASSISTANTS
To: - LIBERAL MEMBERS/DePUTeS
To: - NDP MEMBERS/DePUTeS NPD
To: - NDP/NPD ASSISTANTS
Every MP. Every Senator. Every assistant. Every party was tagged.
Hundreds and hundreds of emails. Each with a 50KB PDF file attached.
Each received an impersonal email from someone almost all of them did not know, asking them to give money (it did not explicitly say that, but it did say it was identified as a leadership campaign event).
There is a name for this sort of email. It's called spam. Even if you accept that parliamentary accounts could be used for partisan purposes (and I have no problems with individual and personal communications), it should not be used to spam Parliament Hill. It's not just in poor taste, it could be considered illegal.
In retrospect, maybe I needed to be clearer on this. I did say everybody got this email, but then I wasn't all that precise.
I mean everybody got this email.
Spam should not be tolerated. Partisan political spam originating from inside the government itself especially.
Jason thinks this should not just be tolerated, but encouraged! That is wrong. It has the potentially of dramatically decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio of intergovernmental communications. Valuable messages are missed in the clutter as Liberal leadership candidates spam away. The more moribund the candidate, the more frantic the spamming. Angry recipients demanding their names be removed from official distribution lists. Network slowdowns, especially if someone does a mass mailing of a huge PDF or graphics image. Viruses inadvertantly being delivered to every account. Email might be free to the person sending it, Jason, but there is a cost to deal with spam for those who are inundated by it.
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Comments
Your initial post certainly seemed to be about "misuse" of parliamentary accounts for political purposes. If your real complaint is about spam, then I have some sympathy. Perhaps the recall attempt was because the email was not meant to be sent to so many people.
Also, to be clear, I was at a fundraiser in TO that I was organizing last night. I know nothing about the Ottawa get together.
In any case, my argument still stands - it makes little difference if an email is sent from a work account instead of a personal account.
Posted by: Jason Cherniak at June 28, 2006 09:08 AM
Your initial post certainly seemed to be about "misuse" of parliamentary accounts for political purposes. If your real complaint is about spam, then I have some sympathy. Perhaps the recall attempt was because the email was not meant to be sent to so many people.
Also, to be clear, I was at a fundraiser in TO that I was organizing last night. I know nothing about the Ottawa get together.
In any case, my argument still stands - it makes little difference if an email is sent from a work account instead of a personal account.
Posted by: at June 28, 2006 09:10 AM
Spam is a misuse, of course. The rules are very draconian, probably because the boundary between an innocuous email and a spam blast my be difficult to pin down. Let's say you assign a number -- 50 or more constitutes spam. Then everyone will break their email lists to blocks of 49.
So the rule is simple -- no partisan political emails using government accounts. So simple I'm surprised that someone would break it.
But then some cynics might say that this is typical of the Liberals. From this email to the Sponsorship Scandal, they just don't seem to get it -- the government, its resources, and its money are not their personal property to be used, misused, and squandered as they see fit.
Posted by: Steve Janke at June 28, 2006 09:21 AM
Okay Cherniak.
In any case, my argument still stands - it makes little difference if an email is sent from a work account instead of a personal account.
So a few million was stolen...dese tings will happen.
OR
...a proof is a proof if it's a good proof den it will be proven........
Pick one.
Syncro
Posted by: Syncrodox at June 28, 2006 09:58 AM
The idea that email is free is, well, idiotic. Just because one doesn't get charged a per use fee doesn't mean a service is free. Providing email service to parliament requires a vast network of hardware and software which costs millions of dollars every year to maintain. This is probably a good investment for the country as it facilitates timely and accurate communications.
While one extra email sent to everyone on the hill may not "tax" the system appreciably, the law recognizes that unfettered personal use will eventually result in higher maintenance costs and/or lower effectiveness for the purpose for which it was installed. THAT'S WHY THERE'S A LAW!!!!
Of course, laws regarding misuse of public resources don't apply to liberals any more than laws regarding protection of citizens and property apply to Ontario natives. Learning these nuances of Canadian jurisprudence will help us all in comprehending when, and when not, to apply the rule of law.
Posted by: Rob R at June 28, 2006 10:04 AM
Just a few questions in regards to "free" and "misuse":
1) Was the email sent out during normal government business hours?
2) Was the person sending out the email part of Dion's parliamentary staff? Or was this person hired seperately out of Dion's own campaign expense acount?
3) Was the email sent out using computer systems owned by the Government of Canada? Or was the computer system purchased by Dion's campaign?
4) Is the campaign being run out of a government office? Or is it being run out of space being rented by Dion's campaign?
As you can see, there are other questions about what is exactly "free"... whether it be if the govenrment of Canada is paying the person sending out the email, or whether Dion's campaign headquarters is a government office in order to offset his campaign costs (i.e. hydro, office rental expenses) or whether the equipment being used for the campaign is government owned and thus the time used to operate the equipment is detracting from time that could be spent on government business...
Wes, email itself is free; everything else associated with it is not. If we could get answers on these questions, then we would know whether or not Dion is abusing his parliamentary expenses to run a campaign.
We already know the email is going out of a parliamentary account. I have high doubts Dion has set up an entirely new computer system in a different office with new staff members and redundantly linked it all back to his parliamentary office... it is possible, but highly unlikely. And if that is the case, then it isn't free.
Posted by: Surecure at June 28, 2006 10:16 AM
Just a few questions in regards to "free" and "misuse":
1) Was the email sent out during normal government business hours?
2) Was the person sending out the email part of Dion's parliamentary staff? Or was this person hired seperately out of Dion's own campaign expense acount?
3) Was the email sent out using computer systems owned by the Government of Canada? Or was the computer system purchased by Dion's campaign?
4) Is the campaign being run out of a government office? Or is it being run out of space being rented by Dion's campaign?
As you can see, there are other questions about what is exactly "free"... whether it be if the govenrment of Canada is paying the person sending out the email, or whether Dion's campaign headquarters is a government office in order to offset his campaign costs (i.e. hydro, office rental expenses) or whether the equipment being used for the campaign is government owned and thus the time used to operate the equipment is detracting from time that could be spent on government business...
Wes, email itself is free; everything else associated with it is not. If we could get answers on these questions, then we would know whether or not Dion is abusing his parliamentary expenses to run a campaign.
We already know the email is going out of a parliamentary account. I have high doubts Dion has set up an entirely new computer system in a different office with new staff members and redundantly linked it all back to his parliamentary office... it is possible, but highly unlikely. And if that is the case, then it isn't free.
And as has already been mentioned, there is a little question about something referred to as the law. Yeah, that might be important or something.
Posted by: Surecure at June 28, 2006 10:27 AM
Anyone who thinks email is free is an ignorant fool. Period.
Posted by: djb at June 28, 2006 12:30 PM
The event wasn't a fundraising event. It was a political gathering. People have political gatherings on Parliament Hill all the time. People get invited to "Liberal" events, "Conservative" events, and even "leadership" events. It is a political place. Everyone on Parliament Hill gets emails from other people inviting them to go to political events. Every day. Everyone who works for an MP is a POLITICAL assistant. These are not public servants.
Posted by: Harry at June 28, 2006 12:49 PM
Too many words expended on a mistake. Fun to surface and flail briefly, but that's it. What's the latest weak-kneed government response to the Caledonia protesters?
Posted by: angryinthecornbelt at June 28, 2006 01:06 PM
Jason seems to be as ethically challenged as the Liberal Party.
1) Why is a parliamentary assistant working for both Dion the MP and Dion the Leadership Candidate. How do the people of Canada and especially Dion consituents know that he is not getting paid by the MP and working for the Leadership Candidate?
2) How do we know the Government of Canada resources are not aiding the candidate in his personal business?
It is not the E-mail, it is the ethics.
Posted by: dkjones at June 28, 2006 02:02 PM
Ethics--Liberals--not to be used in the same sentence! Surecure--you have asked exactly the right questions--but there will be no answers--a Liberal does not see any conflict in this--after all, what is theirs is theirs and what is ours is theirs. I can see it all now--the next Liberal spin--we didn't know about adscam money--we get so many emails that we don't really pay attention!
Thanks for this Angry--now I am angry all over again.
Posted by: George at June 28, 2006 02:53 PM
Um,
Is this about email or about organizing a Liberal leadership campaign out of the tax payer's pocket? If Wilfert was working on his own time I have no issues, No additional cost was born by the tax payer. If Wilfert was organizing a Liberal leadership campaign when he (she?) was supposed to be about government business, this I have a problem with.
Posted by: jgriffin at June 28, 2006 04:40 PM
Not only do we not know whether the staffer was working for the Dion campaign on taxpayer time, but if this large file was sent to hundreds of people over taxpayer bandwidth, then what genuine government correspondance was held up in the pipeline? And how much time was wasted by the hundreds of recipients in opening and deleting or replying to this email?
Posted by: Andrew Spencer at June 28, 2006 07:25 PM
It seems to me than when you have a job and are paid by someone (in this case the government) you do the governments work. E-mailing, or phone so;icitation or letter writng on behalf of a leadershgip candidate is NOT government work.
So perhaps the send the e-mail on thier lunch hour. Then they should do it from home. The ogernment didn't put in internet hook ups so employees and do thier personal stuff from work.
But then agian it is the liberals party-the most corrupt, dishonest, disreputable political organization anywhere. Reading Jason Cherniak just reminds me of all the reasons we don't want the liberals ever again. He thinks its OK for Volpe to get money from children, he thinks it OK for Graham to do his "thing", and he thinks this spam stuff is OK. He makes a "perfect" liberal.
On the other hand Calgary Grit at least has some ethics. He's in the wrong party, mind you but he seems honerable.
Horny Toad
Posted by: Horny Toad at June 28, 2006 08:19 PM
Hey Steve,
As someone who actually administers IT systems within the .gc.ca domain, there are a few minor details that Mr. Cherniak appears to be either willfully ignorant of, or merely blissfully unaware. The first is the Treasury Board of Canada's Policy on the use of Electronic Networks - a nice little document that outlines what is considered to be appropriate use of any electronic network operated by the Government of Canada. Last time I checked, anything with a .gc.ca domain suffix kind of falls under this category, and sending out large volumes of unsolicited e-mail kind of falls under the category of unacceptable useage.
The second thing he seems to forget is that all those little electrons do not just automagically appear in his (or anyone else's) e-mail box...they travel over this little thing called infrastructure - you know, servers (MS Exchange single server Enterprise edition license $2600ish/per + 3000/per server for base MS server o/s, + 10K per box that it resides on), switches (don't get me started, but you're looking at roughly 5k per switch and most sites have multiple switches), Routers (variable, but again you're talking fairly large dollars), and the various bits of disaster recovery, security and anti-virus protection associated with each system. Oh, yes, I also forgot the additional $350ish/per seat for an Office Application suite, and if you're talking about Adobe Acrobat, add in another $500 right there. Oh yeah, I also forgot that depending on who is actually providing the infrastructure (Bell, Telus, etc) data is charged by frame.
Also, these systems also do not run themselves - that's where people like me come in. That is how 'free' e-mail is. They may be 'Political' Assistants, but it doesn't change the fact that it is 'Government' infrastructure and that they are as subject to the rules governing its use as anyone else. I have taken political staff to task on systems abuses and security violations after they have been given fair warning about these policies and standards. My responsibilities are ultimately to the taxpayers of Canada, not some politically connected staffer.
Posted by: Sylia at June 28, 2006 09:24 PM
Personally, I'd just add 2+2 together to figure this out...
1) From an entry on Jason Cherniak's own blog from Monday, May 01, 2006 (I did my own research), when he threw his support behind Dion, we know that Bryon Wilfert is Dion's caucus liaison. I'd say that makes him Parliamentary staff.
2) The email was sent at 1:46 in the afternoon, during regular business hours and well after the standard lunch hour.
3) The email was sent via a government email address.
I think this is a pretty open and shut case, don't you think?
Posted by: Surecure at June 28, 2006 10:03 PM
Uh uh. It's not just that a staffer send the note around by email -- it's that he was doing it on company time. Party business should not be run out of government offices...this then amounts to campaign spending, which must be disclosed under the elections act.
Posted by: david maclean at June 29, 2006 12:21 AM
Steve, why has no one taken into account the most expensive part of this spam from Dion's leadership bid?
How many man hours were spent reading the email on government time when it showed up to their government email boxes?
Posted by: TrustOnlyMulder at June 29, 2006 10:23 AM
So many transgressions, and speaking of conventions.. costs .. unreported donations.
Commenters on http://CalgaryGrit.blogspot.com were grasping at the tiny straw of conservatives not registering donations of 1.7 $million.
The only part of that 1.7 in contention is the profit after convention costs are paid out.
Pretty slim straw to grasp at, yet they went for it to their sad demise.
Have a look to the comment thread end. I am ashamed that I rubbed their noses into some heavy dirt, but I couldn*t stop myself. Cackle! TG
Posted by: TonyGuitar at June 30, 2006 09:14 AM
That*s under June 28th post **Karma**. TG
Posted by: TonyGuitar at June 30, 2006 09:22 AM
Jason is right- Liberals are entitled to their entitlements. No further discussion is necessary.
Posted by: Mac at July 3, 2006 08:20 PM
Your site is great
Posted by: micheal at July 5, 2006 07:56 PM
 
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