Voting For Junk

It should have been a walk in the park for the opposition parties, but the politics of it all was just too alluring to put the ten per-center issue to bed. We talked about this before in these pages, but the outcry by average citizens, most non-politically aligned, concerning the waste and tone of these poorly produced pieces of paper hasn't been hard to misinterpret. They hate the crassly partisan messages sent to their doors at taxpayer expense - $20 million a year by recent estimates.It's diabolical, but it's easy enough to understand why the Conservatives want to maintain the practice, having used such mailings to introduce a kind of gutter politics to what used to be an effective means for an MP to communicate with their constituents. Canadians, both inside and outside the Commons, have been railing against this government practice for the last few years, yet it persists and the public turns away in disgust. If they wanted to be true to the spirit of their own budget accountability, the Conservative party would just pay for these pages of partisanship out of their own coffers, since they boast of flush bank accounts anyway. But of course they won't. Why pay for their own spin when you can pick up the tab?Ten per-centers have been used by all parties to also communicate outside of the ridings. MPs can draft up a page, get it printed by Parliament's press, and then send it clear across the country to another riding. This was a practice that permitted parties to support ridings that were unheld by their own stripe in an attempt to garner support for the next election.Then there was the hidden reason for their use, effectively kept from the public until things were revealed just recently. Put simply: they were designed to anger you enough with their message that they could get you to respond and then they would have your contact information and hopefully your political persuasion for the next fundraiser or election campaign. Everything is about getting contact information these days, and ten per-centers have only become the most recent tool to bring in the names, the money and, hopefully, the vote.Today, the Liberals introduced a motion to get rid of this practice and hoped to have opposition support, and, following some dilly-dallying by the NDP, that's exactly what happened. I rushed back from St. John's for this vote because of it's importance and was gratified that it passed by three votes.  There's no other way to explain this, other than it crafty politics that has been used by every party in the place. This was the chance to let constituents know that they were being heard and attempts were underway to stop what clearly had become a waste of taxpayers' money. The opposition parties voted in unison to condemn the practice, while the government members voted en masse to maintain it.Since the government wouldn't respond to pleas from MPs and their constituents alike, this was the next best option. Well, the vote passed but you're still left with the bill. Coming Soon To A Mailbox Near You - just more of the same junk. The only hope is that the government will now respect the will of Parliament and cease and desist. Chances are slim.  And be certain of this: it was never about you anyway. It was about party coffers, the Canadian political version of hate mail, and the need to get your contact information. This was something of a red letter day, and at a time when we're far too much in the red, it could have been a time where we crawled out of the gutter together. The government seems bent on ignoring the vote. The perils of politics continues.