The RCMP's “inexplicable” intervention into Canada’s election campaign

Writing the day after the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) confirmed that it is conducting an investigation into allegations of insider stock market-trading surrounding Finance Minister Ralph Goodale’s November 23 tax announcement, John Ibbitson, a pro-Conservative Globe and Mail columnist, gushed that the police probe could “cost the Liberals this election.” According to Andrew Coyne of the right-wing National Post, the RCMP announcement was a “bombshell.” Susan Delacourt, author of a flattering biography of Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, has said that the RCMP announcement has so altered the dynamics of the campaign, Canada’s national police have emerged as a “fourth” Liberal “political opponent,” alongside the Conservatives, Bloc Quebecois and New Democratic Party.

The opposition parties seized on the RCMP’s December 28 criminal investigation announcement, touting it as further proof of their claims that the 12-year-old Liberal government is mired in corruption. They have demanded that Goodale, arguably the second most important Liberal minister, step down pending the outcome of the police investigation.

For two years, the Conservatives have made the sponsorship scandal—the looting of a federal government program by Liberal-friendly advertising firms and their provision of kickbacks to the Quebec-wing of the federal Liberal Party—the axis of their opposition to the government. Their aim in this has been to escape scrutiny of their neo-conservative program and close ties to the US Republican right and thereby bamboozle their way to power.

As would be expected, the Conservatives have made the RCMP announcement new fodder for this campaign. Conservative leader Stephen Harper proclaimed the as of yet unproven allegations of insider-trading part of “an ongoing pattern of scandal and corruption” and reference to the scandal was soon incorporated into the Conservatives’ television ad campaign. In a January 2 speech, Harper proclaimed that the first priority of a Conservative government would be passage of a Federal Accountability Act that will purportedly ensure ethical, corruption-free government.

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http://www.wsws.org/articles/2006/jan2006/cana-j09.shtml