Alongside RoboCon Comes "In And Out Part Deux"

RoboCon-zilla vs King In-And-Out in Ottawa: whoever wins, we lose.

Just when you thought the 2011 Canadian election couldn't be more fraudulent, the Conservatives have served up an old favourite from the year 2006: the In and Out Scandal Part Deux (Quebec edition)!

Quick refresher: in the 2006 election, the Conservatives had reached their $18.3 million advertising limit at the national level so they transferred $1.3 million to 67 riding offices across the country that hadn't reached their $80,000 limit. Those riding offices then returned the money to the national campaign office to purchase "advertising" that differed from the national campaign insofar as there was a small print at the end of the TV ad saying "paid for by...".

Think of it as political money laundering.

The result? The Conservative Party of Canada copped a plea deal and was fined $52K and the party's spokesman Fred DeLorey called it "a big victory" in an "administrative dispute".

This is what passes for contrition in the Conservative Party of Canada.

Now while this was playing itself out between the lawyers, the May 2nd, 2011 election was upon us. Most reasonable people would think that they would have avoided fraudulent election practices with the added scrutiny upon them. Most reasonable people would think that a party that rode the coattails of Adscam to power would know better than playing fast and loose with political money.

Most reasonable people, however, are not in the Conservative Party of Canada.

So Robocon took place and we know that thousands of phone calls took place during the election to mislead Canadians to the wrong polling locations. Shady practices at Conservative advertising firm "Responsive Marketing Group" (RMG) in its call centres have surfaced. And of course there's harassment of callers that try to pass themselves off as Liberal campaigners.

Now Le Devoir reports that several Conservative Party ridings in Quebec were given money from the party and then were asked to use that money to pay for RMG bills of $15,000.01.

Conservative candidate Bertin Denis of the riding Rimouski-Neigette-Témiscouata-Les Basques (catchy!) said "We had nothing to say about [RMG's] operations. They did not call us and they made no calls. I was not part of the survey, I was not consulted." Reporter Hélène Buzzetti then asked Denis's spokesman Ghislain Pelletier if the local riding received the results of the calls made by RMG? "Absolutely nothing, madam. If I were in a private company, I would have asked for a report."

Carol Néron, candidate for Chicoutimi Le-Fjord, explained that for the $15,000.01 bill, he only received polling results. 

In both the cases of Néron and Denis, the RMG expenditure was the largest for their respective campaigns. One claims he didn't get anything in return and the other only got polling results. (Sidenote: if a future Conservative candidate in Chicoutimi wants polling information for their election bid, send me a $15K cheque and I'll gladly tell you that you've got no hope in hell of winning.)

So the question is obvious: for whom did the RMG work for? The individual ridings or the national Conservative Party?

If it's the former, RMG is giving crappy service. If it's the latter, the Conservatives have some more explaining to do...

EDIT NOTE: After I posted my blog post comes news that Denis Bertin recanted his whole story. "RMG identified voters in my constituency." His press release comes after he met with Le Devoir and spoke on CBC radio and repeated his accusations. There are no details on the work that RMG did for his riding that, until this became public, was a big mystery to the candidate. If your campaign pays up to $15K to RMG and you can't figure out what they did for the riding until it makes headlines, then something is wrong here.