There’s often a silly season that erupts at the start of an election campaign. The parties haven’t released their platforms yet, the issues aren’t usually defined, and the conversation starts to turn on the damndest things.
Which I think is why there was a flurry on Twitter today—including a few people I follow—about whether Stephen Harper is legally barred from running for office, based on a blog post that claimed:
- The House of Commons has found Stephen Harper guilty of contempt of Parliament.
- Contempt of Parliament is an election-related crime.
- Under the Canada Elections Act, individuals found guilty of election-related crimes can’t be an MP for five to seven years after conviction.
If you’re convinced that Stephen Harper is taking Canada in the wrong direction, then this probably sounds pretty damned appealing. But it ought to ring some alarm bells. And before you reach for the “retweet” button, maybe you want to check the source.
Because every single point they make is wrong. Bearing in mind that I’m not a lawyer, here we go:
- Stephen Harper wasn’t “found guilty” of anything. The Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs found (PDF) that the government was in contempt of Parliament, in a report where neither Harper’s name nor the phrase “Prime Minister” appears even once. The House of Commons then voted on a non-confidence motion and the government was defeated.
- Contempt of Parliament isn’t an election-related crime. (It isn’t a crime at all.) You won’t find it anywhere in the Canada Elections Act or the Criminal Code. (You can, however, find a reference in House of Commons Procedure and Practice, which makes it clear that any misconduct can be deemed to be contempt and that it’s up to the House of Commons to decide how to punish it.)
- The Canada Elections Act is actually very specific about which offenses bar someone from office. They range from publishing a false statement of withdrawal of candidate to trying to vote more than once… but they don’t include contempt of Parliament.
It’s easy to find examples of MPs who have been found directly, personally in contempt of Parliament—Ian Waddell, for example, who was found in contempt in 1991 for touching the Mace but who ran in the 1993 federal election.
And it’s not like this is a slip-up from a normally authoritative source. The blog making this claim also has some other fringe views—including the belief that the recent earthquake in Japan was deliberately caused by the U.S. government.
None of this information is hard to find. And the blog’s idiosyncratic viewpoint isn’t exactly concealed from view.
If you’re one of the people who retweeted this, please: a little due diligence goes a long way, and can keep you from forwarding this kind of misinformed idiocy. And it can keep us talking about the stuff that matters—like the Harper government’s appalling environmental record, or the actual substance of their contempt for Parliament—instead of easily-debunked distractions like this.
I confess that I thought it amusing rather than substantive, but: yes. More diligence.
The reasons so many people have been re-posting the original blog are 1: We are not constitutional scholars and 2: we really want Harper out. Thanks for helping out but take the condescending tone down a notch or two.
William, I’m not a constitutional scholar, and giving the guy’s blog a quick read is enough to fire every this-is-a-crock alarm I have. I found every piece of information here in 10 minutes of Googling, not four years of post-graduate research.
And if we want Harper out, then let’s not waste people’s attention on clearly fringe conspiracy theorists. All that does is make them less likely to listen when we want to point out the evidence that makes a compelling case that the Conservatives are on the wrong track.
We take on some responsibility for the information we pass along, and that implies some accountability when it turns out to be nonsense. That said, I’ll try not to be condescending about it – were there any passages in particular that struck you that way?
Rob Cottingham your long winded analysis is basically bunk
this is a very serious and complex issue
CBC knowledgeably explains the contempt issue and directly
contradicts most of what you have posted
(this includes jailtime for contempt but which has never
been used to date in Canada)
maybe you should do 10 minutes more googling next time
Cinebear, I saw this back when it aired. I just listened to it again. And I honestly don’t hear what you seem to be hearing:
If there’s a passage in there you feel I’ve missed, go ahead and let me know what it is. (A direct quotation and a time reference would be helpful.) But I think you’ve misunderstood what they’re saying, and I didn’t hear anything in there that contradicts what I’ve posted.
here is some more wind for you
Canada Elections Act Charges Laid
OTTAWA, Friday, February 25, 2011
Pursuant to a decision by the Director of Public Prosecutions, four charges have been laid by the Commissioner of Canada Elections under the Canada Elections Act, a federal statute.
The first court appearance is set for March 18, 2011, in Ontario Provincial Court in Ottawa.
The Commissioner of Canada Elections is responsible for ensuring that the Canada Elections Act and Referendum Act are complied with and enforced. The Chief Electoral Officer appoints the Commissioner under the Canada Elections Act.
For information specific to this matter:
Public Prosecution Service of Canada Media Relations
613-954-7803
or at http://www.ppsc-sppc.gc.ca
General information:
Elections Canada Media Relations
1-877-877-9515
or at http://www.elections.ca
Correct: they’ve been charged. But the Canada Elections Act states:
That trial has barely begun, let alone ended in a conviction. (It’s worth noting, by the way, that Harper is not among those individuals named in the charges.) The next hearing won’t happen for at least another three months.
Look, if you’re trying to convince me that Harper and his team behave in a way that undermines democracy, and that we’d be a lot better off as a country if they vanished in a cloud of smoke, sulfur and Tea Party talking points, then you’re preaching to the choir. But then how about talking about their genuinely awful record, where there’s a chance of convincing voters – instead of giving the appearance that Harper’s opponents are grasping at straws?
Get your facts straight
Stephen Harper’s Conservative government was dismissed for committing electoral fraud, contempt of parliament and incompetency.
Electoral fraud undermines the integrity of free and fair elections in Canada. It’s an attack against both the principle and the practice of democracy. A party shouldn’t come to power or stay in power by using tactics that break the law, period. At its core, that is what the Conservative Party in-and-out scandal is all about. Electoral fraud by members of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government brought down the Canadian government. Obstructing the House investigation of this electoral fraud brought about the vote of contempt of parliament against the Conservative minority government and their leader Stephen Harper. The non-confidence vote tabled against Stephen Harper and his Conservative government was based on the findings and charge of contempt of parliament for electoral fraud.
Canada’s director of public prosecutions charged the leadership of Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party’s 2006 campaign team with breaking the law to affect the outcome of an election.
There are legal limits on what federal parties and candidates can spend during the course of an election campaign. The limits are there in order to ensure a level playing field between parties, so that our elections are both free and fair. In Canada, these laws help ensure that the people, not money, determines the outcome of an election.
That is the law that Senator Doug Finley, Senator Irving Gerstein, Michael Geniron and Susan Kehoe are charged with breaking. The Conservative campaign exceeded the 2006 legal spending limit of $18.3 million by $1.2-million. The Conservatives broke the law by overspending $1.2 million on national TV advertising to influence the outcome of battleground ridings instead of the ridings that claimed the expense.
Whether or not you agree with the principle of campaign spending laws, they are still the law, and while the Canadian public and reporters may not be familiar with them, they are well known to everyone who runs a campaign. Even in a local campaign for MP, overspending is punishable with jail time.
Stephen Harper and his Conservatives have argued that it is an accounting dispute. The detailed allegations tell another story. In order to make it appear that the $1.2 million was being spent locally, the national Conservative campaign transferred it to 67 local Conservative campaigns for 24 hours, then transferred it back out. The media company responsible for buying the ads stated that its invoices were forged or altered to support this version of events. Then, local campaigns applied for $777,000 in government rebates to which they were not entitled.
The accusations of forged and altered invoices make this much more than a mere “accounting dispute.” $187,000 of taxpayers’ money was paid out to Conservative campaigns before Elections Canada realized how widespread the scheme was.
At 67 candidates, it involves one in every five Conservative candidates in the 2006 election, in every province but Alberta. It includes 14 sitting Conservative MPs and four members of Stephen Harper’s cabinet: Stockwell Day, Josée Verner, Christian Paradis and Lawrence Cannon. Former minister Maxime Bernier’s campaign was also involved.
A lower court ruling that favored the Conservatives was overturned by the Federal Court of Appeal. The Conservatives’ only defense offered to the lower court had nothing to do with whether the scheme was legal or not; they simply argued that Elections Canada had no business investigating Conservative election expenses: that it was the department’s job to just rubber stamp campaign returns and hand over taxpayer-financed rebates.
Even today the Conservatives are denying the seriousness of the charges and suggest that other parties have done the same, though there is no evidence to back up their claim. Other parties transferred money between local and national campaigns, but none have been charged with doing it to conceal illegal spending.
The company doing the ad buying and a handful of Conservative campaigns expressed reservations because they thought the scheme might break the law. One Conservative candidate in B.C. who did participate was angry because the money transferred in his name bought an anti-Liberal ad, when his main competition was the NDP.
In an effort to demonstrate to the public how lightly he takes the charges, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not removed senators Finley and Gerstein from the Conservative Caucus, though he removed Helena Guergis over a rumour of wrongdoing from a private detective.
That means that under Stephen Harper’s leadership, senators Finley and Gerstein, two people accused of breaking the law — and using forged documents to do so — still have a say in how our government is run. Gerstein is still in charge of the Conservative Party’s fundraising.
On May 2, 2011 vote wisely. The Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper was toppled because of charges of electoral fraud, contempt of parliament and incompetency and those charges triggered the fourth election in seven years. It is the first time ever that a Canadian government (Stephen Harper’s Conservative government) has been found in contempt of parliament. Stephen Harper “stonewalled” parliament for four months on details of its core spending priorities, as well as breaking election laws. Members of Stephen Harper’s government were formally charged with forging documents and misleading parliament. The Conservative government of Stephen Harper was found guilty of contempt of parliament.
You wouldn’t let a convicted [redacted] into your home to look after your children so why would let Stephen Harper be prime minister of Canada again?
Fred, I just don’t see how you get to that interpretation – and I think that’s what we’re talking about, not factual disagreement. Because I don’t see anything in your comment that factually contradicts my post.
The possible exception is your claim that the Tories were defeated in Parliament because of charges of electoral fraud and incompetence. The non-confidence motion only mentioned contempt. And according to the report of the Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs, the actual contempt finding came because of the government’s failure to produce financial information about:
Again: the contempt finding has nothing to do with the Canada Elections Act, and vice versa.
The Canada Elections Act is very clear: people are only barred from holding office once they’ve been convicted of one or more of a specific list of offences. “Accused” and “charged” are not the same as “convicted”. (If you know of a conviction that has been recorded under one of those offences, please let me know.)
I believe the Harper government should be defeated at the polls. But that doesn’t mean I’m going along with a crackpot theory based on misinformation and what really seems to be a deliberate misreading of the law on the part of the original blogger.
One last thing: I hope you’ll understand that I’ve deleted the pedophilia remark from your post.