From Fact to Fiction with a Sprinkling of Funny

There was no filibuster at Committee today. There's always tomorrow when the Con's plan to bring forward 4 motions.

It started off well with Mayrand spending about 1 1/2 hours summarizing what led him to refer the claims of 67 Conservative candidates to the Commissioner. Pretty dry stuff, but it put everything in context. Overall, the questions were as you would expect with each Party attempting to glean more information while making their political points.

Dominic LeBlanc and the rest of the Liberals for that matter spent their time clarifying the misleading information that the Con's have put out:

'Everybody does the same thing, the Conservatives were treated differently, Elections Canada changed the rules mid-election, they are using new rules retro actively, the media was tipped off, etc.'

while being sure to point out at every opportunity that only the Conservatives are being investigated.

The Bloc couldn't understand why Mr. Mayrand wouldn't just say that the $1.3 million in spending must go back to the CPC and that in turn would put them over the limit. Mayrand said that wouldn't be decided until the judgement was rendered in court.

The NDP were obsessed with naming all the office holders, Day, Verner, Bernier, Paradis and more, who were involved in this scheme, while making it very clear that the NDP see this as a clear plan to subvert democracy and steal the election. Well, Pat Martin did that, but Thomas Mulcair seemed to be following his pattern of drawing the Liberals into the fray, including how they just happened to be there with a camera when the raid occurred. He backed away from that a bit toward the end.

And the Conservatives? Well, I suppose the term I would use to describe their questioning would be farcical. In spite of the Liberals asking Mayrand to clarify all the claims they have made, they just kept making the same claims. Poilievre obsessed with the 'leak'. There was no leak of course, but Pierre begs to differ.

He wanted to know what kind of investigation was done to get to the bottom of the fictional leak and is outraged that EC would investigate itself while the CPC was being subjected to court proceedings! (Hmm. Do NAFTA-leak and Bernier enquiry ring a bell?)

He also makes the outrageous claim that EC was focused on ensuring that the CPC received negative press. Paraphrased 'EC was totally preoccupied with creating negative press for a political party.'

I swear, every time this guy opens his mouth he sounds more ridiculous. He later went on to suggest that if the Liberals used any of the tape they acquired as a result of the 'leak', in future election ads, that Elections Canada could be viewed as supporting the Liberal party. Whaaat? Shades of shutting down the use of the Zytaruk tape, no?

Mayrand's expressions while listening to the translation were priceless. His eyes doubled in size when the ridiculous comments were made and as he went to answer, he kind of shook his head in that 'did he really just say that?' kind of way.

David Tilson was the other card on that side that provided some levity, only I think he was serious. He basically said, 'so EC leaks to the Liberals that there will be a raid, as a result of the raid EC now is in possession of Conservative election strategy, so my question is, have you shared the Conservative election strategy with the Liberal party'. He almost cost me a new lap top. For the record, everyone in the room laughed, except the Conservatives.

In the end, much was learned today, but I'll wait to hear tomorrow's hearings to proclaim what that means.

I will say this though. Out of the Blue, the Con's brought forward another motion requesting that EC appoint an independent observer to investigate the fictional 'leak'.

Yo, Harper! The raid was 2 1/2 hours old before the media got there. Leak?

It will be interesting to see how they present this motion tomorrow. The opposition clarified that there was no leak, so I expect they will vote against...that is if they are given the opportunity to vote.