We have all read the news reports about charges facing MP Blair Wilson, elected as a Liberal but now sitting as an independent. Blair Wilson is charged with serious breaches of the Elections Act. In order to help Canadians come to their own conclusions, I'll be posting the original complaint as it was delivered to Elections Canada, in its entirety, in this series of posts.
As far as I know, the original complaint has not be made available anywhere else.
In this post, we will look at the charges.
Review the complaint against Blair Wilson as delivered to Elections Canada on October 24, 2007.
There are eight distinct charges laid -- two regarding offices rented for the purposes of running an election campaign, one regarding how charges for printing business cards and brochures were handled, one about charges to be paid to Canada Post for a mass mailing, one about the cost of unbrellas purchased as promotional items, and three regarding charges for newspaper ads.
In each of these cases, the argument is made that the expenses incurred for these items or services were not properly accounted for to Elections Canada. It matters because there are limits to spending in an election, and when expenses are unaccounted for, it is impossible to tell if the limits were exceeded.
The complaint concludes with this point:
The election result was very close and had Mr Wilson actually only spent what he was allowed to he may well have lost. In the interest of a fair and accountable democratic election process Mr Wilson's campaign must be investigated.
Perhaps it is to aid the investigation that the complainants included an extra sheet that informs the reader that the man who ran Blair Wilson's election effort, Guillio Vilas, works in the Ottawa in Blair Wilson's House of Commons Office.
One more thing of note. The complaint does not request that Elections Canada just investigate these eight specific allegations. Instead, the complaint says that these eight alleged violations establish a "pattern of deception", and that Elections Canada must expand the investigation beyond these eight specifics (assuming the violations are established to habe happened) to investigate the entire campaign.
The Charges Against Blair Wilson:
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