Angry in the Great White North

Back in 2004, there was a Christmas Party in Halton, put on by the Conservative Party and advertised on the Conservative Party website:

Date: December 11, 2004
City: Milton, ON
Location: Halton Country Inn
Time: 6 pm / 18 h
Title: Halton Riding Presents…Halton Country Christmas

Description:
Cost: $50 per person

Contact:
Esther Shaye (eshaye@hotmail.com)

Check out the web page -- it was a very partisan event.

Why am I looking at a two-year-old Christmas Party invitation? Look at the name of the contact person. Esther Shaye. Ms Shaye is the executive assistant of Garth Turner, formerly of the Conservative Party.

She's also on the Halton Region Conservative Party Board of Directors as the executive in charge of Election Readiness.

OK, so she's a Hill staffer who works for the Conservative Party. So what?

Apparently, Garth Turner is very upset that Hill staffers are being used for partisan purposes:

The federal byelection battle in London-North-Centre has barely begun, but already charges of unfairness and coercion are flying.

A senior Conservative official has encouraged MPs and their Parliament Hill staff to persuade voters in the riding to back Conservative candidate Dianne Haskett and suggested area MPs' staff volunteer on her campaign.

That urging came in a letter from Doug Finley, director of political operations and national campaign manager for the Conservatives.

The letter was posted on the weblog of MP Garth Turner, who said it amounts to coercion and a politicization of civil servants.

Turner, recently expelled from the national Tory caucus, said yesterday he acquired the letter from his sources.

The letter to MPs urged them to send endorsements of Haskett to Joseph Dow, the party's Ontario organizer.

"Encourage your Hill staff to participate in persuasion calling, which will be co-ordinated by the party's political operations team," it reads.

Finley also asked for volunteers from area Conservative ridings because "this will be great training for the next general election."

Turner said asking -- or encouraging -- such staffers to do such work is "coercion."

He said the Liberals have engaged in similar activities. "Everybody does it. But it's wrong. I don't know how else to put it."

The problem is that Hill staff are partisan.

Under House of Commons rules, MPs are expected to be partisan and are free to direct the activities of their staff as they see fit, including for partisan purposes.

You know, Turner's complaints would carry more credibility if (1) they were factually correct, and (2) they weren't so hypocritical. His own staffer has duties to make sure the Conservative Party in Halton Region is ready to fight an election. So why is now that when his former colleagues in the Conservative Party are directing their staffers to help fight an election, they are suddenly guilty of misusing tax money and engaging in coercion?

If so, why didn't Garth Turner protect Ms Shaye from being coerced into paticipating in these partisan activities?