OTTAWA—Conservative Senators are quietly using taxpayer-funded literature to target opposition ridings with a partisan crime message as the party gears up for the next election, the Toronto Star has learned.
And at least one of the Senators sent the mailers out at the direction of the Conservative Party of Canada’s national campaign office.
That Senator was Bob Runciman (Ontario). It is not clear whether Senator Don Plett (Manitoba), who distributed almost identical material, did so at the behest of the party.
The tactic of Senators using their office budgets to demonize Liberal MPs in their own ridings is unheard of and an affront to the Senate’s role as a chamber of sober second thought, Liberal Senator Jim Munson, said in an interview.
The two Senators sent out some 6,000 brochures in total to the ridings of Liberal MPs Anita Neville (Winnipeg South Centre) and David McGuinty (Ottawa South) in September urging constituents to join them in demanding stiffer sentences for young offenders while suggesting Liberals were soft on crime.
“It’s the politics of fear paid for by taxpayers’ money and I find it disgusting,” Munson said, adding that he will be raising the controversial practice in the Red Chamber on Tuesday.
“It’s unethical and they should be ashamed of themselves,” Munson said Thursday.
But the Senators were unapologetic about spending thousands of taxpayers’ dollars, saying Canadians deserve to know what the Harper government would to do to crack down on young offenders.
“Anita Neville has shown over and over again that she simply doesn’t want to properly punish crime in my humble opinion,” said Plett, former Conservative Party president, who is among the 35 senators appointed by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to the 105-seat upper Chamber.
By using the Senators to send out this kind of literature, the Conservative Party gets around the prohibition on MPs using tax dollars to send partisan messages to other ridings, which the House of Commons agreed must stop.
The material, sent to 3,000 homes in each of the two ridings, includes an “official petition to the Senate” that calls for revealing the names of dangerous or violent young offenders and adult-length sentences when warranted, among other things.
“Unlike the Liberals, we also believe that the whole point of a criminal justice system isn’t the welfare of the criminal, it’s the safety of you, your family and your home and possessions,” said the identical message in the two mail-outs.
“I take crime seriously, as I’m sure you do. It’s time we told the opposition parties in Ottawa that we want them to take it seriously too.”
McGuinty and Neville say the literature is just further proof the Conservatives don’t hesitate to use taxpayers’ dollars to further their political agenda.
“They are targeting those polls (voter areas) in the ridings that they are quite deliberately making an effort to make inroads into,” Neville said.
“I think it is certainly duplicitous. They’ve used everything they could in the House of Commons until the outcry became too loud and now they have moved to the Senate to do their dirty work. If they want to do their dirty work then pay for it. Don’t do it on the taxpayers’ bill,” she said.
Plett said the fact remains that “we have some serious issues with some crime, especially in the youth crime” and that many people who responded agreed.
Neville noted the petition also provides the Conservatives an opportunity to build the party’s database of potential members and donors, all of it done on the public’s dime.
Runciman, a former Ontario Progressive Conservative MPP and cabinet minister who has a long history of calling for tougher youth sentences, was frank about his decision to target McGuinty’s riding.
“I campaigned there in the last federal election for the Conservative candidate and he did fairly well actually, given the historical nature of the riding,” said Runciman, referring to runner-up Elie Salibi.
Runciman received only about 200 names on the petitions and some “blistering negative emails” criticizing him for sending the literature out.
“There was not really much of a reaction,” said Runciman, who told the Star it was the “Conservative campaign folks” that put him up to it.
McGuinty said the Conservatives have a history since forming a minority government in 2006 of “taking tax dollars and justify spending them in any way in order to achieve their neo-Conservative agenda. It’s that simple.”
“That’s what’s going on right now in Ottawa. That’s what your readers have to know. It is out of control and it’s all because Harper wants his majority,” he said.
