The Canadian Press
Section: National General News
Byline: BY JOAN BRYDEN
OTTAWA _ Conservatives received a slap on the wrist Thursday for misrepresenting an opponent in one of many ultra-partisan flyers the party’s MPs have been mailing _ at taxpayers’ expense _ across the country.
The rebuke from Peter Milliken, Speaker of the House of Commons, is not the first Conservatives have received over their use of MPs’ free mailing privileges.
Nor, if Liberals have their way, will it be the last. They lodged another complaint Thursday with the Speaker, alleging their privileges were breached by a Tory flyer that links the Liberals to anti-Semitism.
However, Tory MPs haven’t let rebukes in the past stop, or even slow down, the blizzard of flyers, known as ten-percenters, that they’ve been sending to thousands of households outside their own ridings.
A recent analysis by Montreal’s Le Devoir found Tory MPs issued twice the number of flyers as opposition MPs, at a cost of $6.3 million last year.
At issue Thursday was a flyer sent last month by Saskatoon Tory MP Maurice Vellacott to constituents in New Democrat MP Peter Stoffer’s Nova Scotia riding. It stated that Stoffer had “worked to support the (long gun) registry” when, in fact, he has been opposed to the registry since its inception 12 years ago.
Milliken ruled that, at first blush, Stoffer is correct that the leaflet constitutes a breach of his privileges as an MP and could potentially damage his reputation.
The matter will now go to the Commons committee on procedure and House affairs for a more in-depth examination. The committee will determine what, if any, remedy to impose.
Four years ago, Milliken issued a similar finding over a Tory flyer that wrongly asserted another New Democrat, Windsor MP Brian Masse, supported the gun registry. After further examination, the procedure and House affairs committee also agreed that Masse’s privileges had been breached.
Yet there was never any punishment and MPs _ from all parties but particularly the Tories _ have continued to paper ridings with increasingly partisan brochures slagging their opponents.
NDP House Leader Libby Davies said it’s up to the board of internal economy, the all-party governing body of the Commons, to resolve the matter.
While some MPs favour eliminating the free mailings outside MPs’ ridings altogether, Davies said she would prefer to regulate both the volume and excessive partisanship of the flyers.
She said the secretive board, which meets behind closed doors and operates by consensus, has looked at the issue in the past without result. But she’s hopeful the series of recent complaints will prompt some action.
“From my point of view, we do have to respond to this and we have to do it in a way to show we can conduct this program of ten-percenters and mailings in a responsible way that isn’t so excessive and so attack-oriented that we’re not only alienating and offending individual members of Parliament but also the general public,” Davies said in an interview.
The latest flyer linking Liberals to anti-Semitism may prove to be the last straw, at least for opposition parties.
Montreal MP Irwin Cotler, who is Jewish, lodged a complaint that the flyer tarnished the reputations of all Liberal MPs by suggesting they are soft on terrorism and “willingly participated” in an “overtly anti-Semitic” UN-sponsored conference on racism in 2001.
“This is a false, misleading, prejudicial and pernicious slander,” Cotler told the Commons.
Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre argued that the flyer simply factually recounts some instances of Liberal waffling on Israel.
But both the Bloc Quebecois and NDP supported the Liberal complaint. Indeed, Bloc MP Michel Guimond angrily accused the Tories of demagoguery.
“This party excels in demagogy, they’re specialists,” he fumed, noting that Tory flyers were recently sent to Quebec ridings alleging that Bloc MPs support child trafficking.
