Dear friends,
A few weeks ago, Stephen Harper was headed for a majority government and 4 years of unchallenged control over our country and our environmental policies. Coming together like never before, 63% of Canadian voters stopped him. And that's just the beginning. It was close, so every bit of effort mattered. In just the 2 weeks before election day, Avaaz members rallied to run full page newspaper ads and hundreds of radio ads across the country, raised over $135,000 in a few days, produced a song from top Canadian artists that played on radio stations across the country, helped get over 400,000 Canadians to receive voting guidance from voteforEnvironment.ca, and took over 15000 pledges to vote strategically in close races.
Not sure I would give them that much credit, but Avaaz did inspire a nasty news release from the John Baird campaign. Way to go folks, you made 'em look!
21 comments:
Avaaz? Oh great, another useless lefty NGO arrives on the scene. They can propably take as much credit for stopping a Conservative majority as the Council of Canadians can; meaning none.
The link to Soros is because Avaaz is linked to MoveOn.org, another one of the useless endeavours Soros pours his money into.
that's very interesting. it seems to me that they would have necessarily broken the law though. a law i disagree with, as I wrote in a national post column, here.
whether they raised $135K or who they are is not the question, but how much they spent. as a registered third party they have extremely restrictive spending limits for any given riding ($3000)and nationally ($150K). full page newspaper ads and hundreds of radio ads is expensive, more than $135K no question.
that law was challenged by no less than Harper, who lost at the Supreme Court. Harper lost but the court acknowledged that the spending limits are such that no advertising of any kind can effectively be done by 3d parties. Decision is here.
These limits have not even increased since then.
Interesting, Jermo. You're a freaking lawyer???
bcl: you knew i was a lawyer when we discussed the trademark issues surrounding green shift (btw: i predicted a settlement and a settlement happened, it was an easy call to make, granted).
also, i just checked and these limits have gone up as election canada says. but still, 100s of radio ads and full page newspaper ads? they were directed at 3 ridings, so their spending limit was 3x$3666 = $11K.
i think i will do a bit of BCL style digging to expose these guys. i mean, i disagree with the law but as long as its on the books it should be applied.
just another point with respect to your post, the 3 candidates they targeted did not include Rahim Jaffer. In fact, their targeted conservative candidates all won by landslides: Baird, Kamp, and McKay.
Jermo,
I didn't know you were a REAL lawyer. But if you find anything interesting let me know.
And I know they didn't target Jaffer. My point is that the other lobby groups claiming to have had an effect are only claiming to have taken down one MP. These guys are more ambitious; they say they stopped a whole majority. Think big, I say.
Oh, he's a real lawyer all right. Look at how he's whining about how money wasn't allowed to occupy its rightful position among the forces that influence the dissemination of information because he didn't like the outcome in Québec?
How much did The National Post pay you for that, Jérome?
Ti-guy: let me just say I'm writing this from my newly purchased yacht (i believe we're somewhere around fiji just about now).
No, actually, you dont get paid for opeds ti-guy, you submit them and hope they get published. Oh, and I understand your crack about lawyers, but I should tell you that lawyers are overwhelmingly liberal and Liberal.
Anyways, you disagree with my point? You think groups like Avaaz should be restricted in what they can say during an election campaign? I dont, and I think Avaaz are a bunch of retards. That's what its like to be conservative: you realize that principles you espouse apply not just to the people you like, but to those you dont like either. As for you, you spout off your hatred of christians happily while cheering on the HRC's prosecution of Mark Steyn for writing about the finer points of Islam.
BCL: you thought I was lying about being a lawyer? now I dont expect you to have a high opinion of me, but come on. Anyways, I'll let you know. According to this they'd be in the clear.
That's what its like to be conservative: you realize that principles you espouse apply not just to the people you like, but to those you dont like either.
If that were so, you'd be a little more concerned about all the campaign publicity sent out by the Conservatives over the last two years in the form of ten-percenters financed (to the tune of millions of dollars) by taxpayers, would not?
Please keep doing what you do best...dealing with technicalities and the application of a technocrat's perspective to the understanding reality and spare me any grand orations about principle with regard to the intersection of the dissemination of information and democracy.
As for you, you spout off your hatred of christians happily while cheering on the HRC's prosecution of Mark Steyn for writing about the finer points of Islam.
You can tell you're a lawyer...no one else is capable of squeezing that many substantive un-truths in so short a sentence.
ten-percenters financed by taxpayers? sorry i'm not sure what you mean by ten-percenters.
as far as I know Conservatives paid for those ads from their own money, some of which certainly came from the tax payers, thanks to Chretien's financing reforms. i dont see the issue but please expand - im quite capable of criticizing my own side when its needed.
what about you, do you think Avaaz should be restricted in their election advertising?
Jermo,
they don't pay for a published Op-Ed? Star used to give you $150 (when it made paper edition).
With CanWest at 99 cents today, I can believe they're not paying for their op-eds.
ten-percenters financed by taxpayers? sorry i'm not sure what you mean by ten-percenters.
Obviously, you don't have a grasp of the complexity of the issue here, if you haven't heard of those. I don't want to start talking about them with a lawyer since we'll quickly get into a discussion of legality and legalism is precisely the problem I'm having when it comes to the dissemination of information that's required for a healthy democracy.
what about you, do you think Avaaz should be restricted in their election advertising?
Yes. And if it violated the law, it should be held accountable. So the Conservatives with the In-and-Out scam.
BCL: no they dont. Im not sure about what the Star's position is today, but either way i was just happy at getting published - it made the paper edition too, of october 16.
Either way, Im not interested in legal technicalities, but im guessing you're talking about the ads that made fun of Dion which were broadcast outside of an election campaign. Or are you talking about MP pamphlets sent out to their constituents?
Either way, different but related issue.
Ti-Guy: good on you to accept that the law should apply to Avaaz too. I appreciate that. I'll reciprocate with regards to the in-and-out campaign - in fact Avaaz seems to have been involved in an in-and-out thing of their own.
Or are you talking about MP pamphlets sent out to their constituents?
You're getting close, but I don't want to have to argue with a lawyer using creative language, so I'll let you move this discussion forward, if you're so interested.
I'm not. I'm hoping for a ruling in Parliament, but that will be a long time coming if it ever happens at all.
Ti-Guy: good on you to accept that the law should apply to Avaaz too. I appreciate that. I'll reciprocate with regards to the in-and-out campaign - in fact Avaaz seems to have been involved in an in-and-out thing of their own.
How about you learn English first? I don't like talking to people who seem to think words have no meaning.
How about you learn English first? I don't like talking to people who seem to think words have no meaning.
what are you talking about? "ten-percenter"?
Google it and then come back.
I don't want to get distracted by a tiresome discussion involving language parsing and legalism and would rather focus on the issue of conflating spending limitations and limitations on freedom of expression, which was at the root of the decisions that went against Harper at the SCC and which the American Right has been able to use so successfully in its effort to defund its opposition.
would rather focus on the issue of conflating spending limitations and limitations on freedom of expression, which was at the root of the decisions that went against Harper at the SCC and which the American Right has been able to use so successfully in its effort to defund its opposition.
sure me too. you're the one who brought up those ten-percenters thingies anyways.
Anyways, doesnt George Soros fund moveon.org, and isnt moveon.org a 3d party which aggressively advertises against republicans?
As far the american right having "defunded" their opponents, Obama is loaded and Soros is even more loaded. I dont think the republican's opponents are "defunded" at all.
In any case this should not be a partisan issue. If the gag laws were repealed, Avaaz would benefit, and presumably so would other interest groups, left and right.
sure me too. you're the one who brought up those ten-percenters thingies anyways.
Well, it was all in the spirit of proper pedagogy...that you'd go off and educate yourself about the details of an issue very much related to this whole topic so we would be operating from the same knowledge base.
It's actually much harder to challenge someone who is ignorant of something, as any parent of a teenager knows. For example, when I talk about defunding the American right's opposition, I'm not talking about campaign spending and narrow political affiliations. Much of the American Right is found among Democrats, remember.
I guess Jermo was really only interested in implying that law-breaking Avaaz was being used by the evil Soros to influence our elections with all his billions and not really interested in a discussion of substance.
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