The federal Conservative Party is suing Elections Canada after Elections Canada ruled that the spending by some Conservative candidates in the last general federal election did not qualify as spending on local advertising but, in fact, was spending on national advertising.
The Elections Canada ruling had two chief implications. First, the local candidates were ineligible for thousands of dollars of rebates. Second, if, in fact, the spending was for “national advertising”, then the Conservatives would be more than a $1-million over their national spending limit — a serious violation of elections law.
The Conservatives, in their court filings, and in comments to reporters on this issue argue that everything they've done on this issue has been above-board, fully reported, and, they say, completely within the law.
In some cases, national party headquarters transferred money to a local candidate's campaign and then had the local campaign buy advertising that was produced and placed by the national campaign. The television ads were often, in many respects, identical to national ads except that, in the fine print at the end, it might say something like “Authorized by the agent for [insert local candidate's name here]'
Tom Flanagan, Harper's former chief of staff, seems to suggest in his new book, Harper's Dream, that this was one of innovations party organizers came across for the 2006 campaign.
“Even though there is a cap on national campaign spending, it is easy and legal to exceed it by transferring expenditures to local campaign that are not able to spend up to their own limits.” (p. 188).