Angry in the Great White North

Garth Turner's 100-to-1 advertising campaign

Garth Turner keeps insisting that local funds out of existing budgets are covering the mass mail campaign preceding his Lost Tory Tour. But the more I read about the issue of MP-originated mail, the more I discover that this is a significant controversy with a big impact on costs, costs that are paid for by the taxpayer. Now I've learned that it is the difference between spending $1 to send a bunch of flyers, and spending $100 to send the same flyers.

It looks like Garth Turner and his friends chose the $100 option.

Fiscal responsibility would require, at the very least, being up front about the difference in cost.

Tracking Garth Turner's secret admirers

For the heck of it, let's create a central post for tracking, if we can, which Liberal MPs are charging Canadians first class postage rates to deliver thousands of anonymous flyers on behalf of Garth Turner. Garth Turner says he doesn't know who these MPs are, so we'll have to build up a list of Garth Turner's secret admirers on our own.

Trying to estimate the cost of Garth Turner's franked mail campaign

With some insight from a postal worker, I can start to put some potential costs to the taxpayer to advertise Garth Turner's Lost Tory Tour.

Update: Made some changes now that I have some more hard data on the way these mailings work.

Not thinking about who sent franked mail for Garth Turner

Since I can't figure out who the 15 Liberal MPs who helped Garth Turner with his franked mail campaign, I'll have to think about something else. Something completely unrelated.

Junk Mail

This blog post shares the name with a Garth Turner blog post on the same subject. Garth Turner poses some very good questions that deserve some answers.

Is Garth Turner making you pay for an expensive targeted mail campaign?

Another example of a generic Garth Turner tour flyer being delivered by individually addressed envelopes to people in the areas where he will be making an appearance. Another example from what might be an expensive advertising campaign being paid for by taxpayers, but more interesting is what the recipients have in common.

It could explain why we're being made to pay for this.

Garth Turner's expensive mass mailing on your dime

I've been reviewing my thoughts on the material sent to people to encourage them to see Liberal MP Garth Turner speak as he tours western Canada. Now with photographic evidence, I think I was wrong in my initial assessment. Special thanks to Garth Turner for helping me understand what is going on.

Garth Turner's taxpayer-funded Liberal-organized Quebec-based advertising program?

I got an email from a Calgary-based reader, relating to me the strange snail mail letter he received advertising the Garth Turner Lost Tory Tour. I'll relate to you what he told me, and let you muse about what it all means.

Update #1: The mail was sent from 15 different Liberal MPs into western ridings where Garth Turner would be doing his presentation. I suspect these were "10-percenters", a tool provided by the House of Commons to faciliate communications between an MP and his constituents, but increasingly used to send aggressive partisan mailings to voters in ridings held by other parties without spending party funds. If so, just how is this not a Liberal Party operation and just how does this not cost the taxpayer money?

Update #2: Having received a photo of the material sent, I've changed my mind. I don't think these are 10-percenters at all. I think this is expensive franked mail containing the equivalent of a 10-percenter. That's a huge leap in expense. Imagine the local dry cleaner sending you their monthly flyer via first class mail. Imagine then that the post office bill for that dry cleaner was paid for by you, whether you used that dry cleaner or not.

Seniors are demanding action on income trusts!

Liberal MP Garth Turner of Halton is on a speaking tour of western cities, outlining the multitude of reasons why Stephen Harper and the Conservatives ought to be thrown out of office. One of those reasons is the October 31, 2006 announcement by Finance Minister Jim Flaherty that income trusts would no longer enjoy tax-free status.

That announcement quickly devalued trusts, and investors whose portfolios were top-heavy with income trusts felt burned. That hit seniors particularly hard. Garth Turner says as much:

The Harper Party has repeatedly attacked its own bases of support. It betrayed seniors by taking their income trusts – folks who consistently have voted blue.

Seniors had their income trusts taken away? Why would seniors be so heavily engaged in income trusts in the first place? They are not a low-risk investment appropriate for a retiree's portfolio, at least not in a large proportion. You would think that the advice given by investment dealers is the real problem, especially since the taxation sword had been hanging over income trusts for quite some time.

Actually, you would be right to think that. A lot of seniors are thinking that too. If they are angry with Jim Flaherty, it is because they don't think he's moving fast enough on cleaning up that industry, an industry they believe is home to people who are little better than con men and who have been able to collect fees and commissions while dispensing poor advice to people who were too trusting.

Not exactly the spin Garth Turner has been putting on things.

Don't take my word for it though.

Check out other entries from the Garth Turner Lost Tory Tour category
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Garth the General

Garth Turner posted an artistic rendering that shows him to be Stephane Dion's general assigned the task to take back the West for the Liberal Party, while General Stephane Dion takes the east. Taken in the context in which it was intended, the cartoon is actually poking fun at those who think Garth Turner has been assigned such an exalted task.

Of course, Garth Turner doesn't provide that context, nor does he link to where you can understand the original context.