Tories legal bills far outstrip those of opposition parties

Responding to questions in the House of Commons this week about the Conservative Party paying Sen. Mike Duffy’s legal fees, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said such arrangements were not unusual and were practised by all parties.

“The party regularly reimburses members of its caucus for valid legal expenses, as do other parties,” Harper told the Commons Tuesday.

Indeed, while all parties retain legal help from time to time, records filed with Elections Canada suggest that the Conservatives do it a lot more often.

Financial statements for 2012 show the Tories spent $3.4 million on “professional services,” which would typically include lawyers, accountants and consultants.

That figure is nearly seven times as much as the $511,000 spent by the official Opposition New Democrats, and six times as much as the $604,000 from the federal Liberal Party.

Part of the legal fee spike last year, no doubt, was the cost of defending a Federal Court application by the Council of Canadians that sought to overturn the results of the 2011 election in six ridings.

The Conservative MPs won that case but failed to convince a judge that the Council ought to pay the party’s costs of $355,907, which included 577 billable hours of work by party lawyer Arthur Hamilton and two of his colleagues, to the tune of $263,060.

Despite the lengthy and expensive litigation battle, the party’s “professional services” costs actually fell in 2012.

The previous year, they spent $7.5 million in this category. It was an election year, but that wouldn’t account for the sky-high legal bill as any election-related legal fees for the party would be included in a separate filing with Elections Canada.

One might well ask, what exactly was this money spent on? Unfortunately, under the Elections Act that information is kept secret, even from Elections Canada’s auditors.

Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand has suggested bringing the party’s books under his purview as part of the long-overdue reform of Canada’s election laws (for which Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre is responsible) but don’t expect the Conservatives to voluntarily put their party’s expenses into the public domain.

Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author:  GLEN MCGREGOR