Stephen Harper Needs Your Money!

Did you get your call yet?

I haven’t, but a friend of mine did.  Stephen Harper needs money to defend you against heroin addicts using safe injection sites and other assorted scary things…

The news of this made for some interesting conversation, why would Stephen Harper need money now?  The next election is already slated for 2015, is there going to be a snap election to surprise everyone?  Maybe the Harper Party needs to start working on more non election Attack Ads, this wouldn’t surprise me since the last one went over so well.

That was sarcasm by the way.  The last ad generated lots of money, for the Liberal Party of Canada.

I’m more of the opinion that Stephen Harper needs your money because he has spent a pile of bucks on lawyers, and they don’t come cheap.

Do you remember the Etobicoke election?  The Liberal candidate, Borys Wrzesnewskyj challenged the results because of “irregularities” in the vote.  The Harper Party man, Ted Opitz countered the argument and the whole thing went to court.  Borys, using his own money won the first round and the results were overturned leaving Ted to decide if the ruling would be challenged at the Supreme Court of Canada.  At the last minute Ted’s team took the case to the high court.  Ted had to get clearance from the Harper Party I guess, since they were bankrolling his legal team.  I wonder how much it costs to contest a case at the Supreme Court.  I’ll wager it isn’t cheap.  Ted won, by the way and has gone on to represent Canada as a voting observer overseas.  The irony is… well words fail me.

How about the Robocalls challenge in 6 contested ridings?  The Council of Canadians backed the 8 people who were arguing that the elections in their ridings were affected by fraudulent Robocalls and the 6 Harper Party People who had won in those seats took to their lawyers to fight this.

Although the 6 MPs retained their seats, the judge found that the “trench warfare” and other means of delaying and trying to derail the case meant that the MPs would not be reimbursed for their expenses.  The Harper Party will remain on the hook for the bulk of the legal costs.  The judge even noted that the Harper Party money was underwritten by the taxpayers of Canada in his ruling.

Add to this the Peter Penashue election expenses case where the Harper Party repaid the money in question for Penashue so he could run in the by election in Labrador as well as his legal costs I’m sure.

Currently there are two Harper Party MPs in trouble with Elections Canada and they are starting litigation to retain their seats and there appears to be at least one more of these cases on the horizon.

More time in court, more Harper Party money for the lawyers.  And these are just the highlights, there’s probably a lot more that never made the press.

So why should I care that the Harper Party is spending tons of cash in the court room anyway?  For the simple reason that I am paying for it.  So are you.

I haven’t donated to the Harper Party, I’ve never donated to any party.  Most people haven’t.

But… the people who do donate get a percentage of their donation back at tax time.

You and I are subsidising the Harper Party.

If someone gives the Harper Party, or any other party $200.00, they get back $150.00 from the government.  We make up the difference.  When you get your call they’ll even brag about this to you.

All these court cases, all the attack ads, the computer database that the Harper Party maintains with information on virtually every Canadian alive is paid for, in part, by You and Me.  I don’t know if the $90,000.00 that Nigel Wright gave to Mike Duffy came out of the Harper Party Fund, but I’ll bet the cost of the lawyer brought in by Nigel was.

For the record, it wouldn’t bother me all that much if they located a safe injection site in my area.  The police would keep an eye on it and the people using the service would be encouraged to not loiter in the area.  It would probably be far safer than having a crack just down the street from me.

And there really was a crack house just down the street from me.

Cheers, BC