Conservatives drop controversial election financing scheme
In a classic example of the “dog mysteriously fails to bite man” journalistic genre, the Ottawa Citizen reports today on the curious absence of any “in and out” transfers in the most recent campaign expense reports filed by Conservative candidates. Although the party still maintains that the practice of moving money between national and local campaigns was entirely legal, not a single one of the 192 candidate reports published to date include payments to the party for advertising. In fact, the average amount spent on advertising by local Tory campaigns dropped by nearly 40 per cent from the last election. That doesn’t mean that the In and Out controversy is over, however: Elections Commissioner William Corbett’s investigation into the contentious financing scheme is still ongoing, as is the legal challenge that the party brought against the agency in 2007.