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Rob Anders, of Calgary, is a four-time Conservative member of Parliament, committee chairman, worker in Stephen Harper’s leadership campaigns and an early adapter to the Reform movement. He was an active Reform member on campus at the University of Calgary, and went on to work with the National Citizens’ Coalition, where Mr. Harper was in charge, directing a lobby group called Canadians Against Forced Unionism.

Mr. Anders made national headlines in 2001 when Parliament conferred citizenship upon former South African president Nelson Mandela, whom the Calgary MP called “a Communist and a terrorist.” Mr. Anders held up unanimous consent in the House for the honour, then refused to take Mandela’s phone call when he reached out to make peace.

Rob Anders is a member of the National Firearms Association and the Responsible Firearms Owners of Alberta, and the religious-based lobby groups, Focus on the Family and Canada Family Action Coalition (supported by televangelist Charles McVety). Said the Calgary Herald in April, 2002, “That a fringe character such as Anders is still active in the new party should be a red flag for those who want the Conservatives to move to the centre… The Conservative Party can become a national alternative to the Liberals, but Harper will need the courage to tell old friends who have stood by him their time in the spotlight is over.”

But, apparently, not yet. Since 2004 there has been an active push within Calgary West to find another Conservative candidate, which Mr. Anders has been able to resist, and which came to a head in August, 2006, with the potential candidacy of Walter Wakula. But this long-time Tory was thwarted by the national party’s strict application of new nomination rules, designed by Doug Finley and approved just days before. Mr. Wakula (and the rest of the riding) were informed on the Friday night of a long weekend that the nomination meeting would take place in 30 days (on the eve of the next long weekend).

Thus, an Anders contender had just nine days to sign up new members, apply to be a candidate and come up with a financial bond and successful police background check. Impossible to pull off, Wakula and others gave up. Mr. Anders was acclaimed. Subsequently, eleven local Conservatives, disgusted at the lack of grassroots democracy, launched a lawsuit against the party, claiming proper procedures were not followed, including having the nomination committee chaired by one of Ander’s employees.

Commented Don Martin, in the Calgary Herald, “This is but one riding example of the 308 where a party with populist roots has morphed into a governing force that uses strong-arm tactics to ensure the fix is in for its preferred public face.”

Meanwhile Mr. Anders was fighting another lawsuit from a former constituency office employee, James Istvanffy, who alleged he was fired after questioning the way Anders handled his finances. In his statement of claim, Istvanffy said the MP defrauded taxpayers and violated election laws by borrowing money from his staff for personal expenses, then paying them back with salary increases, false expense claims and even by handing over government-owned furniture. He also alleged members of Anders staff worked full-time on a Stephen Harper campaign while still pulling down House of Commons salaries, in contravention of the law.

In June, 2007, federal Liberals made the most of the situation by calling for an RCMP investigation into Anders and the serious charge of defrauding taxpayers. Anders denied all allegations, saying he would vigorously defend himself. Eventually the parties reached a settlement, the terms of which were not revealed.

I mention these things because in my mailbox this weekend in Halton are three ten percenter mailings from Rob Anders. On one the headline asks, “Above the law?” and on another, it asks, “Toxic?”

I’d say so.

If you live in Halton and received a few of these, I just wanted you to know who sent them.

There was some discussion here in the last few hours about MP mailings, after I published the negative campaign literature being circulated in the riding of my colleague, Mark Holland. The circular is a direct appeal to riding residents, asking them why they would want to vote for Holland. That makes it a piece of election material, not an informational mailer on federal issues.

That also breaks the rules. But that fact does not stop Mr. Harper’s party from burning through millions of public dollars, printing and distributing such partisan stuff. In fact, many Conservative MPs have distributed far more copies of material than they rules allow, and I have recently submitted proof of that abuse to the House of Commons committee which oversees this.

Some people ask if all parties and all MPs send out “householders” and “ten percenters” (the former goes to each home in a member’s riding four times a year, the latter can go to 10% of the homes as often as three times a week. Additionally, 10%ers can be sent into other MPs’ ridings, with a modest charge going against the sponsoring MP’s office budget).

The answer: All Conservative MPs send these out in the maximum allowable quantities, since they are not given a choice by their party. A majority of MPs from other parties also create and mail ten percenters, but the effectiveness varies greatly by caucus. The Bloc and NDP are religious about blanketing ridings they want to win. The Libs are not.

In fact, in order to counter the Conservative assault (estimated to be about 30,000,000 pieces of mail this year), I’ve actually been trying to get more of my colleagues engaged in informational mailings in their own ridings. As a caucus, we have no automatic program which requires all MPs to churn this stuff out. Many of the Liberal MPs simply refuse to issue anything to voters that they have not personally written, or approved or checked for truthfulness. That differs from the Harper MPs, whose name is slapped on material they actually never see.

As I said, this whole program is now costing more than $10 million, just to print the leaflets alone – the kind that Dean Del Mastro sent out three times this week in his Peterborough riding. This is in addition to free mail which MPs can have delivered to all homes, and those four householders, which can be up to 12 pages in length.

So, while I use this material within Halton, and while most MPs also send it to their constituents, I’m convinced it’s time the program ended. I’m sure 90% of this junk ends up in blue boxes or, worse, landfills. Whole forests are being felled just to make the paper to print partisan poop-o-grams. Canada Post is obligated to deliver tens of millions of copies. And what was intended for informational purposes to connect MPs and voters is now being used – by the governing party most particularly – as pure election campaign material.

Surely in this age of the Internet, when MPs can blog, send emails and post whatever they want on their web sites; when over 70% of the Canadian population is on high-speed; surely the time has come to stop this polluting perversion of political communications. As a minimum step, the House of Commons should disallow the ability of any MP to blanket other ridings with printed material paid for by the public.

Canadians make better use of this cash, than spend it on politicians trashing each other.

Dion event update:
Glad you asked. A big whack of bloggers have indicated to me they’ll be coming to meet Stephane Dion in Oakville, the evening of August 20th. As I promised, I will make the guy available to chat with you in an informal setting before he and I go on stage for an open Town Hall meeting, at the SVCC Hall (1280 Dundas, west of Trafalgar). There is probably still room for a few more, so email me directly if you wish to be a part of that reception: garth@garth.ca.

Many other people have asked me if they can come for the main event (7:30 pm), the Turner-Dion Flaming Hoops Economic Environmental Green Shift Patriotic Extravaganza. Of course. In fact, word of the event has not even been whispered to the community at large, so there are still lots of seats. Just send me a note, telling me how many spaces you need.

One night only. History, dudes. Be there.

Mark Holland 10%er Update:

Conservatives misuse taxpayer-funded resources for campaign literature – Holland
OTTAWA – Liberal MP Mark Holland today filed a formal complaint with the House of Commons Speaker expressing concern about the Conservative Party’s misuse of taxpayer-funded resources.

Office MP Mark Holland
613-995-8614

And now for Three Small Outrages:

One: On October 31, 2006, Jim Flaherty shocked a couple of million investors out of their shorts by dumping a 31% tax on income trusts. This was ten months after the Harper Conservatives won office by promising they’d never do such a thing. The reason given: If income trusts were not slapped down then giant companies like Bell would convert to trusts, and Ottawa would be out hundreds of millions in tax dollars.

As a result of that move, Bell was prevented from converting, which would have seen dividends paid to investors, who would have then paid income tax. About $800 million a year. Instead, Bell went shopping for new shareholders, leading to the takeover – about to happen – by the Ontario Teachers pension guys. To pull this off, BCE will be burdened with $32 billion in debt.

So, here’s the outrage: BCE will not be paying any corporate income tax this year or next year or the one after. Not a cent. Jim Flaherty just blew his foot off. Worse, a grossly-indebted company is now struggling, and on Monday laid off 2,500 people. There are thousands more to follow, I’m told.

This is another example of a government that has absolutely no idea of the consequences of its actions. Income trusts. Over-spending. Forty-year mortgages. Bragging the dollar up. And mighty Bell, now a mess of wires and junk bonds.

Two: In the last year that Liberals ran the government, Ottawa burned through $41 million of your money buying advertising. Shocking.

In the first year that Stephen Harper ran the government, Ottawa torched $87 million in taxpayer dollars buying ads. Outrageous.

Is this hypocritical for a bunch of people who spent the last election campaign getting Canadians incensed over money wasted on advertising the ‘Canada’ brand in Quebec – in other words, the sponsorship scandal? Is the country better off today for $87 million shoveled out for TV ads, newspaper spots and billboards telling you what a great job the feds are doing?

By the way, overall federal spending has hit the highest point in history. The surplus is gone. Income taxes have not been reduced, and the latest numbers show Mr. Harper’s team now running a deficit. Maybe we need an ad explaining that.

Three: The illustration above is from a ten percenter circulated by Dave Mackenzie (a Conservative MP for the riding of Oxford, in southwestern Ontario) in the riding of Mark Holland, a Liberal MP out Ajax way, and is supposed to appear as if it’s from Stephen Harper.

The mailer is designed to tell the people of Ajax-Pickering that Holland is not doing his job, and collects his salary under false pretenses because he (like me) abstained from a number of confidence votes which would have forced an election over the last few months. Now, you may or may not agree with our move to deny Harper the election he wanted, at the time he wanted it, but here’s the outrage: Taxpayers’ dollars are being spent sending what is clearly Conservative election literature into an opposition MP’s riding.

This mailer was designed by the Conservative Research Group, mailed under Mackenzie’s postage-free privileges, and printed free of charge for the Conservatives by the House of Commons. In fact, taxpayers are on the hook for an estimated $10 million a year worth of electioneering junk like this, the vast majority of it sent by the richest, best-funded party in Canadian history, which just happens to also form the government.

If you agree this kind of mailing is an abuse of taxpayers’ funds; if you think the Conservatives should not be spending $87 million a year promoting themselves with your money; and if you feel it’s a crime against the national treasury to have Bell – with $17 billion a year in revenues – pay no taxes, then join me.