Angry in the Great White North

The Liberals might be in trouble with regards to their election expenses:

Elections Canada is scrutinizing almost $800,000 worth of expenses filed by Liberal candidates in last fall's election campaign, The Canadian Press has learned.

The elections watchdog has asked the Liberal party to produce detailed invoices and documentation to prove that a mandatory riding services package was actually worth the $2,500 each candidate was required to pay for it .

Until Elections Canada is satisfied that the packages aren't really a thinly-veiled donation to party headquarters, the candidates won't receive their election expenses rebates, worth a total of about $3.5 million to the cash-hungry party.

"Until that's resolved, then it's holding the process up somewhat," Liberal party national director Rocco Rossi confirmed in an interview Wednesday.

The riding services packages included buttons, posters, brochures, photos of the leader, and templates for lawn signs, web sites and letterhead.

So the question Elections Canada wants answered is whether this package is worth the $2,500 per riding charged by the party.

I decided to check all 307 returns myself.  As a result, I've got a few extra questions to add to those being posed by Elections Canada.

First of all, it doesn't not look like every riding was compelled to pay for this package.  I counted about 50 returns in which I could not identify this $2,500 charge to the Liberal Party or to the Federal Liberal Agency.  In the rest, there was one specific line item for exactly $2,500.

Of these returns, just under half allocated the entire $2,500 to the column on the return labelled "Miscellaneous expenses (including non-candidate travel)".  Given the nature of the package -- website templates and buttons and such -- this seems reasonable.  Most of the big name candidates like Michael Ignatieff and Bob Rae allocated this $2,500 in this way.

Thirty more candidates, including Joe Volpe and Peter Milliken and Marc Garneau, allocated the $2,500 against "Advertising (Other)".  I suppose it's a matter of interpretation about the roles of these buttons and posters, but it doesn't seem like a significant difference.

What about the rest?  Now it gets interesting.

I counted 43 returns in which the $2,500 was allocated in the same way every time: $2,479 to "Miscellaneous expenses (including non-candidate travel)" and $21 to "Amounts not included in election expenses".  That latter column is used for expenses incurred outside of the election period.  The classic example is the post-election audit that is required by Elections Canada.

So how is it that 43 candidates each found exactly twenty-one dollars worth of something inside this bag of buttons and brochures that was "spent" outside of the election period?  Perhaps there was a voucher for an audit.  But then why isn't every return filed this way?

But it gets better.

There are 34 candidates who allocated the $2,500 worth of material they bought from the Liberal Party in the opposite manner.  They allocated a mere $169 to "Miscellaneous expenses (including non-candidate travel)" and the remaining $2,331 to "Amounts not included in election expenses".  This is a real head-scratcher.  How do you "spend" buttons after the election is finished?

But it gets better.

There are 10 candidates who allocated the whole $2,500 to "Office Expenses: Other (including telephone)".  The candidates include Denis Coderre, Jim Karygiannis, and Garth Turner.  Apparently their mandatory riding services packages had free cell phones or calling cards.  Or maybe they used the contents for decorating the office.  I suppose that means never giving away the buttons.

But it gets better.

There are four candidates who allocated the whole $2,500 to "Election surveys or other surveys or research".  Candidates like Keith Martin and Myra Sweeney must be counted as the most clever candidates in the election, figuring out how to make a Stephane Dion button spit out local riding polling numbers.

But it gets better.

One candidate, Michelle Simson, found $2,310 worth of survey and research material in her package, as well as $169 of miscellaneous election expenses, as well as $21 worth of material not included in election expenses.  In other words, she hit all the columns with those magic numbers.

But it gets better.

One candidate got it backwards.  When Maurizio Bevilacqua looked in his mandatory riding services package, he did not find $169 worth of "Miscellaneous expenses (including non-candidate travel)" and $2,331 worth of "Amounts not included in election expenses", like 34 of his Liberal colleagues.  Instead he recorded $2,331 under "Miscellaneous expenses (including non-candidate travel)" and $169 under "Amounts not included in election expenses".  The same values, but inexplicably switched columns.

I suppose it could be noted that about 50 candidates have not actually paid the $2500, but have allocated the amount in the "Unpaid claims" column.  But then I'm not certain what they paid for.  This magic bag of buttons and posters seems to be all things to all people.