Angry in the Great White North

The Liberal Senate Caucus is buying the same software that the Liberal Party is buying to managing voter contact, as revealed by fildebrandt.  The package from Voter Activation Network, the same outfit that has provided software to the Democratic Party in the United States.

According to the Memorandum of Understanding, there seems to be few limits to what the data will be used for:

A: Purpose

The purpose of this MoU is to begin a business relationship between LSC and VAN.  VAN shall license to the LSC an integrated database and interface application software that will, as set forth herein, enable LSC and an unlimited number of its authorized users to maintain, host, access, and generated lists, data, analyses and reports from Senator's case work and other lists.

The problem here is that Canadian taxpayers are paying for this software.  That's fine if the Liberal Senate Caucus is planning to use this exclusively for Senate functions, but the MoU makes it clear that there is nothing that prevents the Liberal Senate Caucus from expanding access to the software to include Liberal Members of Parliament, and to allow them to use the software to generate partisan election lists using information generated from MP constituency databases.

In fact, why would the Liberal Party buy this software at all if the Senate Liberals can buy it using taxpayer dollars, and then use it for whatever they want?

The request for funds from Senator Grant Mitchell, addressed to the Chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Internal Economy, makes mention that the software will be used for Senate purposes, but there is no promise that it will be used exclusively for such purposes:

I want to emphasize that the priority of the website and database is to solicit the views of Canadians.  This represents very important research for supporting Senators in their work representing Canadians' interests.

Senator Mitchell never makes mention of excluding Liberal MPs from using accessing this database, of excluding Liberal MPs from feeding data into this database, or of restricting the use of the database to Senate functions, and in particular not using it as a partisan electioneering tool during a general election.

Most tellingly, the letter never makes mention of the fact that the Liberal Party is supposed to be buying this software too.  The documentation makes great effort to justify the reason for buying this software from the United States.  You might think that the Liberal Party was also leaning in this direction after its own evaluation would be justification for the Liberal Senators to buy their own separate copy.

But the letter is silent on the matter of Liberal Party interest in the software.

Indeed, the letter was dated March 16.

It was only six weeks later, on May 1 at the Liberal convention, that the Liberals announced that the party had acquired this software, so clearly their evaluation must have been taking place at the same time as the Liberal Senators asked for senate funding to buy the same software. 

So where is the assurance that there were two separate purchases?  Where is the assurance that $60,000 of taxpayer money was spent on buying the software for Liberal Senators to use to do their work, and that the Liberal Party purchased a separate license for a separate installation running on a separate database using separate party funds?

Call me paranoid, but I think these are fair questions to ask.  After what seemed to be an attempt to encourage Liberal donors to donate twice their allowed yearly limit to the party, I think a certain level of suspicion is justified when it comes to how the Liberals raise and spend party funds.

More at Canadian Taxpayer's Federation blog. 

Update: A comment from fildebrant on the CTF blog says that the request from the Liberal Senate Caucus was turned down.  But I'd still like to know if this was an attempt to save the party $60,000 by having Canadian taxpayers buy the software instead.  I suppose we can start by asking to see the MoU between VAN and the party for the current purchase, see if it was prepared after the Senate request was turned down, and if the party was charged $60,000 for the package.