Something fishy about HarperPAC
Re Election rules need tightening, Editorial June 27 I’m having a hard time believing that the Prime Minister’s Office was not somehow involved in the creation and sudden demise of HarperPAC. It was created by Conservative insiders yet no one in the PMO, and hence Stephen Harper, knew about it? It is well known that Harper micromanages all and everything Conservative so it is hard to believe he was not aware.
Now that it’s gone he can claim the high road and point out that only the NDP and the Liberals use questionable third-party funding. More likely this was a set-up from the beginning and we’ve all been taken for a ride. John Blake, Picton, Ont.
Harper created the boiling mess we are now experiencing with U.S.-style political action committees. I thought Conservatives were supposed to honour and keep our old tried-and-true ways. Instead they have inflicted us with four-year, non-stop political advertising campaigns. Shame! Hugh Jenney, Stella, Ont.
With supreme irony, Harper wants to dissociate himself from his namesake HarperPAC, a pre-election propaganda group that is trying to support him. His official head of propaganda, Kory Teneycke, suggests the PAC is “politically damaging,” in part because it may be seen as raising “very questionable donations” and at- tempting to skirt the Canada Elections Act. Teneycke is not questioning the message that HarperPAC is delivering, just the lack of control of the message.
If it had called itself “Friends of a Strong-Proud-Free Canada” it would probably have been congratulated, regardless of any dubious sources of funding, provided the message could be edited by trusted friends. Geoffrey Kemp, Mississauga
Sadly, U.S.-style political action committee ads, financed by anonymous donors and with no accountability, have become a significant feature in Canadian politics. To argue that they represent freedom of speech is specious in as much as we don’t know who is speaking.
Couple this with the restrictive provision of the (Un)Fair Elections Act that will disenfranchise countless eligible voters and you have a real and constant danger to our democratic process. Bill Wensley, Cobourg, Ont.