Angry in the Great White North

In my last post, I wrote about how Liberal Party MP Garth Turner had accused Will Stewart, the Halton Conservative Riding Association, and the Conservative Party in general, of telling Elections Canada of how Garth Turner had, as a Conservative candidate in 2005, accepted a transfer of $10,000 from the riding association to his campaign account on December 1, 2005.

The problem was that Garth Turner was not the candidate, and would not be for four more days.  Putting that money in the account was against the law.  His official agent ought not to have processed the transfer and deposited the cheque until December 5, 2005, when Garth Turner was formally informed by Elections Canada that his candidacy was official.

Elections Canada investigated the premature transfer, and sent letters to Garth Turner, Halton Conservative Riding Association CEO Will Stewart, and Garth Turner's official agent in that election, Lorne Greenwood.  Elections Canada scolded them, and issued a caution to Greenwood.

How do we know about this?  Because Garth Turner chose to reveal all the details:

Today I keyed open my mailbox and found inside a letter from Elections Canada, telling me that I had been cleared in an investigation regarding election financing. That was news, since I didn’t know there’d been any investigation. But the letter also suggested the Halton Conservative Association, had provided information to the vote cop showing some money was transferred from the local association bank account to the campaign bank account two business days before I’d been certified by the local returning officer as a candidate.

Elections Canada pointed this out to me, said my old Conservative campaign was formally cautioned, but concluded it would “not be in the public interest” to pursue the matter. That seemed logical.

Garth Turner chose to forgo the confidentiality of the proceedings, it seems, because it suited his political aims.  In this case, his aim to embarrass the Conservatives:

And here is a measure of Mr. Harper’s adherents. My decision in 2005 saved the locals from the embarrassment and shame of the in-and-out fiasco. I turned down sleazy internal Conservative financial deals. And I left them $30,000 in the bank account after the party tossed me. Their response: Write Elections Canada to have my campaign investigated and charged, and my reputation shot up, based on decisions they themselves made.

So how did Garth Turner come to the conclusion that the Conservatives had written to Elections Canada about their own mistake with the transfer?  Apparently, in the official letter to Garth Turner, Elections Canada revealed that Garth Turner had been burned by his former colleagues:

But the letter also told me that the Halton Conservative Association and its president, Will Stewart, had recently provided information to the vote cop showing that some money was transferred from the local association bank account to the campaign bank account two business days before I’d been certified by the local returning officer as a candidate.

So Garth Turner has revealed the following:

• Elections Canada investigated his 2005-2006 campaign concerning a $10,000 transfer from the riding association to his campaign account
• Elections Canada determined that the rules had been broken
• Elections Canada cautioned the parties involved, and in particular, the official agent
• Elections Canada had been told about the problem by the Conservatives themselves, in writing, who were hoping that Garth Turner would be embarrassed
• Elections Canada named the chief letter writer as Will Stewart

Why am I summarizing this?  Because this was the state of affairs this morning, nearly twelve hours after Garth had posted all this information yesterday evening.

I think it's fair to say that when it comes to confidential information, there was little that we did not know about Elections Canada's dealings with Garth Turner concerning this incident.

That's thanks to Garth Turner himself.

This is the point when I became involved.  I found it very strange that Elections Canada would have revealed the identity of those who had provided information that kicked off an investigation.

So I studied the letter that Elections Canada sent to Lorne Greenwood...oh...how did I get the letter?

None of your business.

Anyway, I studied the letter, and it supported all the points Garth Turner had decided to share with us through his blog...except that the letter Lorne Greenwood received said the Elections Canada auditors had discovered the problem.  This makes sense since all the information relevant to the issue of the transfer was in the possession of Elections Canada already.  No one needed to tell them about it.  An audit would have spotted it quickly enough.

Nowhere did the letter to Lorne Greenwood name Will Stewart or other individuals, related to the Conservative Party or not, as the parties providing information to Elections Canada.

Why would Garth Turner's letter be different in this regard?

One answer is that Elections Canada gives special treatment to MPs, or to Liberal MPs in particular, when it comes to discussing who is stirring up trouble for them.  Everyone else gets a sanitized version of the letter, but MPs (or Liberal MPs) get letters in which all the people are named, ripe for payback at some later date.

That doesn't seem right.

The other explanation is that Garth Turner's letter from Elections Canada does not contain information that "told [him] that the Halton Conservative Association and its president, Will Stewart, had recently provided information to the vote cop".

But that explanation is just as unsatisfying, since it would suggest that Garth Turner was embellishing the contents of a confidential letter he had received from Elections Canada.  The added (and fabricated) details of a letter that was not published, or even directly quoted, were designed to cast the Conservatives in a bad light, and to make Garth Turner appear to be the subject of some sort of vendetta.  By attaching the added (and fabricated) details to a document issued from Elections Canada, Garth Turner is able to leverage off the credibility of Elections Canada.

You can see why this explanation cannot be right either.  It suggests Garth Turner was engaged in some sort of disinformation initiative.  That would be dishonest and unworthy of a member of parliament of any party.  I refuse to believe that Garth Turner would misrepresent an official communication from Elections Canada in this manner, and for such a purpose.  And if by some accident Garth Turner read more into the letter than was justified, I would expect that Garth Turner would immediately and profusely apologize to Elections Canada for having so badly misrepresented the contents of the confidential letter that he chose to share publicly.

So where am I going with this?  Garth Turner has added a new section to his post:

In conversations with Elections Canada officials today, I was asked what knowledge I had of how the official letter referenced above ended up on Steve Janke’s web site. Indeed Mr. Janke, a prominent (if error-prone and very partisan) Conservative blogger, not only reprinted the text of the letter to my official agent in full, but reproduced an image of a portion of it. This seemed to cause a great deal of concern in Ottawa, because, as I was told, “that letter is confidential to the recipients, and it is not something that we would publish or make public.” Indeed. Confidential. So, how did Mr. Janke get it?

How did I get it?  None of your business.  Of course Elections Canada would not want to make the contents public.  Too bad the cat was let out of the bag last night on Garth Turner's blog.

Indeed, if it weren't for the fact that the key detail concerning the identity of the alleged source of the information given to Elections Canada did not appear anywhere in the Greenwood version of the letter, there would be nothing worth publishing.  But the appearance of this important information solely in Garth Turner's version of the letter seemed to make a study of the Greenwood version newsworthy, in its original form.

It brings into question how Elections Canada, an independent agency, reveals information of the most sensitive sort to MPs concerning investigations into their activities.  That Elections Canada would do this calls into question how Elections Canada can say it works on behalf of Canadian voters.  If I had a question about the election-related actions of MP Mr X, why would I tell Elections Canada if it became widely known that it was Elections Canada policy to identify me to Mr X, exposing myself to potential reprisals?  I might be an employee of Mr X with his private concern but also an official with his political campaign, and in that second capacity had come across some questionable activities.  Obviously I wouldn't want Mr X to know that I had spoken to Elections Canada.

A great deal of concern in Ottawa?  If I was an official with Elections Canada, I certainly would be concerned that Garth Turner's revelations last night had made it obvious that Elections Canada could not be trusted to keep confidences.

The concern must have started with Garth Turner's decision to describe all the details of the letter.

Three copies were mailed. To me, my official agent and the president of the local Conservative association, Will Stewart. I have mine. My former official agent is out of town this week, and his letter is unopened. So, on behalf of Elections Canada, I asked Mr. Stewart if he released for publication a confidential letter which was not addressed to him. He did not answer. So, I guess we’ll have to come to our own conclusions.

I guess you will.  But then I find it odd that Garth Turner is asking questions "on behalf of Elections Canada".  Since when did Liberal MPs become agents of Elections Canada?  Or does it work the other way around?

If Elections Canada has questions, I'm sure Elections Canada can ask them.  I wouldn't recommend that anyone answer any questions posed by a Liberal saying he's acting on behalf of Elections Canada.  That just seems weird.

Mr. Stewart has also accused me of “undertaking a deliberate smear of (him) personally which had zero basis in fact.” That stemmed from my assertion he had asked EC for the review of my campaign finances. He says he did not. So, I apologize for that - even before he apologizes for releasing my confidential information. We have to start repairing this somewhere.

And there we go.  Garth Turner apologized to Will Stewart.  Good for him.  And yet I'm confused as to why.  Garth Turner, in describing the contents of his confidential letter from Elections Canada, had stated that Elections Canada had identified Will Stewart as the source of the information that started the Elections Canada investigation.

Indeed, an apology to Will Stewart doesn't make sense without an apology to the Halton Conservative Riding Association as a whole, and a separate apology to Elections Canada for having misunderstood the contents of the confidential letter, and then going public with that misunderstanding of the contents of the confidential letter.

If the confidential letter from Elections Canada to Garth Turner had really "told [him] that the Halton Conservative Association and its president, Will Stewart, had recently provided information to the vote cop", then Garth Turner has nothing to apologize for, to anyone.