01 December 2008

What I want for Christmas

Assuming, that is, we get Liberal-NDP coalition with the backing of the Bloc.

I want a bill introduced in the new Parliament; let us call it the Clean Campaigning Bill.

Said bill would empower and require the Auditor General to:

  1. perform annual audits of each duly accredited national political party (aka, does it get tax money due to its share of the vote? Does it have more than one member of parliament and any one of caucus? a whip? a policy paper? a logo? If either of those are true, the audit happens) and all its officers, paid staff, directors, members of parliament who have been seated at any time during that year, and any other persons doing business on behalf of the party are audited, too. In addition, any persons who may have campaigned for office and who received greater than 5% of the vote in their riding shall likewise be audited.
  2. lay and prosecute criminal charges should any violations of existing campaign finance law, the requirement minimum accounting practises ("that money? Oh, that money just, uh, appeared"), or anything legally qualifiable as fraud be discovered to have occurred.
  3. hire the necessary persons to accomplish 1 and 2 in a timely and capable manner.
Every year. Without fail.

I want this very much. I can hope that the present and future leaders of the NDP, the Liberals, and the Bloc can see how such a thing might function in their collective interest, now and in the future.

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