Angry in the Great White North

From Garth Turner's post entitled Junk Mail:

It was in my Campbellville mailbox a few days ago. It was in Esther’s Oakville mail slot, too. And my mother-in-law’s Mississauga post office. In fact, just about everybody I ask recalls having seen the latest piece of Conservative “information” on how the Harper Party is saving the environment, as opposed to the Liberals, who destroyed it.

Fine. Whatever. Blah, blah, smear, blah, blah, smear.

Note that the flyer was in the mailbox, and that it was broadly distributed. That makes it a 10 percenter, a form of political mailing that an MP can send. It is a generic flyer that can be delivered to a maximum of 10% of the households in a riding. It cannot be directly addressed, so it is treated as bulk mail, like a grocery flyer, and Canada Post charges bulk rates (easily a tenth what you would pay to send the same piece of paper in an envelope with a stamp as first class mail). The charges are covered not by the MP or the party but by the House of Commons (that is, you and me, the taxpayers).

Now consider this against Garth Turner's mailing:

See how the Harper government is destroying the economy, as opposed to the Liberals, who will save it.

Fine. Whatever. Blah, blah, smear, blah, blah, smear.

They're both 10-percenters, and probably just as likely to sway opinions.

But the Conservatives spent mere pennies, like maybe a nickel, on each flyer.

We know that Garth Turner, with over a dozen other Liberal MPs helping out, charged the taxpayers the cost of the printing, the cost of envelopes, the cost of stuffing the envelopes and individually addressing them, and the cost charged by Canada Post to sort, transport, resort, and individually deliver each flyer to a specific residence.

I'm thinking that weird code was scanned in before the envelopes were give to House of Commons staff to put in the mail, and then any returned envelopes will be rescanned so that Liberal Party mailing lists can be updated. That's just a supposition, but if it's true, add it to the cost of just sending out a flyer. Remember that all these actions are performed either by MP staffers or House of Commons personnel.

But back to Garth Turner on junk mail:

It is not the first time this has happened and, actually, the House of Commons right now is investigating several other instances of the Conservative info machine having strayed far into the integrity ditch. And one might ask: If this is a CPC spin document, then why isn’t the party paying for it? Why are you paying?

Good questions, Garth. Why isn't the Liberal Party paying for this mail campaign. The envelopes being used to deliver these anonymous flyers have no stamps and so are franked mail, meaning the House of Commons pays Canada Post for the delivery charges. Full charges, not bulk rates. Why am I paying for this?

But then maybe I'm not paying for this after all?

From the backgrounder for the Lost Tory Tour:

Is the Liberal Party behind this?

No, but the office of the party president and the leader have assisted with some details, such as coordinating local meeting notices.

Who is paying for this?

MP Turner and his wife Dorothy are using flights allocated in his existing office budget. Local volunteers are providing ground transportation. Most hotel rooms have been donated. Other costs will be paid personally by Turner. The goal is zero public cost.

Other costs will be paid personally by Turner.

So the cost of the franked mail campaign, which has yet to be revealed by Garth Turner, but was extensive enough to require the help of 15 Liberal MPs, will be picked up by Garth Turner personally? Will there be a scanned image of a cancelled cheque made out to the House of Commons appearing on Garth Turner's blog sometime in the future?

But we know that's not going to happen. From Garth Turner, another rider to the "other costs to be paid personally by Turner" promise:

John McCalum was one of 15 MPs from across the country who diverted local riding communications to support my tour effort. This was done so costs would be contained within existing MP budgets, with no new money spent letting people in these four provinces know of the Town Halls.

Now wait a second. Local riding communications support? The envelopes bear the House of Commons stamp on the back:

Why does Garth Turner say this comes out of individual MP budgets? My understanding is that the cost of franked mail is covered by the Board of Internal Economy, a committee chaired by the Speaker of the House. This committee administers a budget for services provided by Parliament:

The Parliament of Canada Act authorizes the Board of Internal Economy to make by-laws with regard to the use of funds, goods, services and premises provided to Members. The Members’ Manual of Allowances and Services, produced in accordance with the By-laws of the Board of Internal Economy, contains administrative guidelines on the availability and use of all the funds, goods, services and premises to which Members are entitled.

The House covers the cost of printing newsletters, commonly known as “householders”, sent by the Member to all constituents. Members have free mailing privileges to send out householders and other materials. These mailing privileges are often referred to as “franking” privileges. “Franking” is the process by which Members of the House of Commons, by affixing their signatures to an addressed piece of mail, may have that mail delivered postage-free anywhere in the country. It is available only for mail that is addressed to places in Canada and may not be used for parcels, special delivery or other special services offered by Canada Post. Mail addressed to Members of the House is also delivered free of charge if sent to a Parliamentary Hill address.

So the Board of Internal Economy foots the bill for mailing these things, not individual MPs. Notice that other costs, such as certain travel costs, are not covered, and those costs if initially covered by the Board of Internal Economy are then deducted from a Member's office budget. Franked mail is not one of those charges passed back to the MP's office according to the material I've studied.

So no MP's office budget was drawn down, if I understand how this works, by offering to help Garth Turner.

Right. So these dozens or hundreds or thousands of envelopes are being paid for by me after all. And through the general parliamentary budget, not by individual MP office budgets.

No MP's budget was harmed in the production of this tour.

Full first-class postage cost to deliver an anonymous cheap bulk flyer.

Just because the House of Commons will pay for something doesn't mean the money has to actually be spent. Just because the House of Commons will pay for something doesn't mean it is of no cost to me. If the cost of materials, labour, and postage comes out to $75,000 to send these flyers via franked mail, instead of $5,000 as a 10-percenter, then that is a $70,000 cost to the taxpayer being anonymously carried by the Board of Internal Economy, and not coming shared out by multiple MPs and their office budgets.

I'm asking the same question Garth Turner has asked. Why am I paying?

Addendum: Are we ever going to get a list of the 15 MPs who used their franking privileges to send out Garth's free flyer by first class mail?

Footnote: Lorraine asks about Garth Turner's readership:

I was just readiong on a Liberal Blog about Garth's me me me and I'm smarter than any "con" presentation in Victoria last night.

He claimed that he gets approximately 2 MILLION READERS PER MONTH on his blog!! Is this true?

Of course it's true because he said so, and he's not a liar. He might be confusing his terms, though.

First, Garth Turner keeps his metrics private. Garth Turner uses Google Analytics, as I do, and you need to log in with an account to see the data. I also run Sitemeter in public mode so people can look at the metrics if they like, imperfect as Sitemeter is. He does not. I also use AWStats which checks the actual server logs -- those numbers are rock solid.

Now consider this:

That is the data from compete.com. It shows that the entire website garth.ca (blog, old columns, everything) gets about the same traffic as I do. I know I served 994,000 pageviews to 26,000 unique visitors who came 76,000 times to my site in June (numbers from AWStats). According to compete.com, garth.ca got just about the same traffic as I did in June.

Clearly that's not right.

Note that compete.com does not report the correct number for either of our sites because it depends on the user having a browser plugin to track the visit. So let's some small unknown fraction of the visitors have that compete.com plugin. I don't need to know that fraction because given that our subject matter is the same, I'm going to assume that are readership is relatively identical when it comes to how loaded up their browsers are with plugins. That means same fraction of readership visiting each of our sites has that plugin. Since compete.com is showing the same traffic, I just read off my traffic from my visitor tracking tool and apply the same number to garth.ca.

And that does not give me two million visitors.

I'm not sure what I did wrong, because randomized testing (the technique I'm using the drive these assumptions) is a well proven methodology.

Maybe he gets more page views than I do, and so he offers more pages to the same number of visitors. If I doubled my pageviews by getting people to click twice as often, I could get two million. Perhaps Garth Turner is confusing pageviews with visitors. It's an easy mistake to make. Or maybe my comparison is fundamentally broken, and he really does get two million visitors.

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