Gerard Kennedy

Liberal Motion Bans Taxpayer Sponsored Partisan Advertising

TORONTO – Gerard Kennedy, MP for Parkdale High Park, hailed a House of Commons vote last week to eliminate out-of-riding “ten-percenters” as a victory against taxpayer sponsored partisan advertising. The Liberal Opposition Day measure will save over $20 million in government waste per year and stop overuse and abuse of this privilege. Kennedy called on the Harper government to implement the decision immediately.

“This use of ten-percenters can only be termed a corruption of the accountability agenda that drove the election in 2006,” said Mr. Kennedy, referring to the decision by the House of Commons board of management that year. The longstanding ability of MPs to inform constituents in local neighbourhoods (10 percent of the riding at a time) of issues was turned into capability to attack. The numbers of pamphlets quadrupled from 100 million in 2006 to 402 million in 2009. The annual dollar cost is equivalent to the advertising spending by all parties during an election.

“Millions of Canadian doorsteps were being soiled by some of the worst products of political backroom imaginations meant to interfere with any reasonable political debate,” said Mr. Kennedy. “From any perspective – ethical, cost or environmental – this was a terrible practice.”

Kennedy has long been against the practice and was the second lowest user of ten-percenters in the House of Commons last year.

“Many of my constituents complained to me about the pamphlets they were sent by other parties, calling them examples of ‘American go-for the throat politics’, “a particularly outrageous waste of the taxpayers money,” and “blatantly partisan…outright electioneering,” said Kennedy, citing emails.

Conservative MPs, who voted to hang on to the entitlement, accounted for 69 percent of ten-percenter printing costs in 2008-09, compared to 13 percent for the Liberals. On a per-MP basis, they were nearly matched by the NDP who voted to surrender the suspect perk in the glare of the spotlight this week. The Conservatives spent an average of $49,680 per MP on printing costs for ten-percenters and householders, while the NDP spent $33,825 per MP, which is nearly double what Liberals spent, at $18,400 per MP. Kennedy’s costs were just $963.

Upon passage of the binding motion in the House of Commons on March 16, the Liberal Party immediately suspended the printing of ten-percenters for unheld ridings and cancelled those that had not already been printed. The Conservatives have so far continued to deliver theirs, despite belated assurance from Prime Minister Harper the practice would be halted.

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