Today there was a leak showing a negative draft report from the auditor general released in January that the Tories misspent a lot of money on the G8/G20. Certainly this doesn't help the Tories prior to the debates and has the potential to be a game changer much the way the income trust leak was. Whether it will be a game changer or not, we will have to wait until the end of the week before we see the results. Some scandals seem to stick and others don't and it is difficult to know which category this will fall on. If still front page news by Friday, then it probably will hurt the Tories, but if largely forgotten but then, its impact will likely be rather small. The three opposition parties called for the full report to be released while the Tories realizing this could sink their campaign also agreed to have the full report released. The problem here is that the Auditor General must release the report to the Speaker of the house where it will be tabled in parliament and since parliament is not sitting this is not possible until after the election. One could argue we should change the rules, but until they are changed, we will have to wait until the election to find out the exact details. Whether it will be devastating news for the government or something relative minor, I really don't want to speculate. Nonetheless even without the final report, this still could hurt the Tories if the opposition is able to establish a narrative of this government being secretive and wasteful spenders. At this point, a lot depends on who you trust most. As for the leak, I don't condone releasing confidential information regardless of the cause. The means never justify the ends. At the same time even if the person who released it did it to harm the Tory campaign, I doubt any of the parties or senior ranking officials had anything to do with the illegal release so trying to hit them over this likely won't work.
There has been some talk about Ignatieff voting in foreign elections. In the case of the United States, he is not an American citizen and would not be eligible to vote therefore unless he voted illegally (which I think is extremely unlikely) he did not vote. He may have endorsed Kerry in 2004, but considering most Canadians and pretty much every Liberal wanted Kerry to win, I don't see anything too controversial here. In the case of Britain, he did admit to voting in the 1997 election, however under British law, anyone who is a legal resident of Britain and a citizen of the UK, Ireland, or a Commonwealth country is eligible to vote. Since Canada is a commonwealth country, Canadians residing in the UK are eligible to vote in British elections. It is true British citizens living in Canada cannot vote in Canadian elections, but voting rights are not always reciprocal. Since he paid taxes there, I don't see what the big deal is as I suspect most Canadians if they lived abroad and had the right to vote in the country they lived in, they would vote so no real big deal. As for him voting in Canadian elections while abroad, he said he did in some, but didn't give a number. One can only vote in Canadian elections if they have resided in Canada during the past 5 years and are a Canadian citizen so I wouldn't be surprised if he missed voting in some Canadian elections, not because he was disloyal to his native country, but simply because he couldn't vote. Anyways tomorrow is the debates, so depending on how late they go and how tired I am, I may or may not post tomorrow night, but certainly on Wednesday I will.
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