Solvent Contra Nugget (Nov. 18, 2011)
Re: “Elections Canada Boss Should Go” – Brian Lilley (North Bay Nugget, Nov. 18, 2011)
I read the North Bay Nugget, whenever I can summon up the intestinal fortitude to do so. I appreciate that there is some local content. There is not much in the way of real journalism going on, but local events are reported, so it is somewhat helpful. In a town like this, in times like these, you gotta take what you get in terms of media.
However, the opinion page is decidedly different. It is not local. It is the opinion of Sun Media, and as such can be expected to be vicious and acidic in its Conservative bias.
I wish I could skip it, but Sun Media editorials are like a car accident in which innocent people are mangled; you want to look away, but you can’t.
Today Brian Lilley takes on NDP corruption.
This comes about a week after the Conservative Party was fined $52,000 for breaking campaign finance laws. The charges were dropped against senior party officials in exchange for guilty pleas by the organizations for which those party officials were making decisions.
Talk about slippery dealings. It is really too bad that the Crown didn’t have the kind of intestinal fortitude that it took for me to read Lilley’s column today, because if it did, we might not have seen a plea bargain in this case. We might have seen actual prosecutions and some light shed on how Conservatives used creative bookkeeping and a superior wallet to sway election results.
That the Conservatives used fraudulent means in order to win an election is news. Not the kind of news you would expect Sun Media to communicate to those concerned – Canadians – but definitely big news.
The fact that the NDP erroneously thought donations made in Jack Layton’s memory to the Broadbent Institute would be tax deductible as political contributions, were informed they were wrong, and then immediately returned the donations, is not really worth Brian Lilley getting himself into a bile spewing lather over.
The NDP mistake falls under the category of no harm no foul. The Conservatives’ blatant disregard for the law resulted in a subversion of democracy, and a Conservative government that most Canadians did not vote for.
Sun Media does not want us to understand this.
Tony Loeffen
