Inkless Wells

Paul Wells on all the latest out of Ottawa—along with the occasional post about jazz. Follow Paul on Twitter: @InklessPW
He also offers his thoughtful perspective of Stephen Harper’s last 10 years in his recent eBook, The Harper Decade.

Categories: Capital Read, Inkless Wells

Question, answer: Jack Layton

by Paul Wells on Wednesday, September 16, 2009 4:37pm - 101 Comments

Inkless makes a too-rare visit to the scrums after Question Period and poses this question to Jack Layton.

Question: when you borrowed to finance your campaign, only a year ago, your collateral was your anticipated per-vote public subsidy. How can that be your collateral for another campaign — because the Prime Minister has said he will abolish the per-vote public subsidy?

The Hon. Jack Layton: I’m not sure about this, but we may be the only political party to own a building in downtown Ottawa that has a very good tenant, in fact more than one in it.

Question: That wasn’t your only collateral a year ago.

The Hon. Jack Layton: You’ll, you’ll have to talk to — well there’s actually many sources of collateral. There’s the percentage that comes back as a percentage of the campaign expenditures automatically, there’s all kinds, it’s a fairly complicated set of revenues that make up the revenue of a political party. What I’m very happy about is the surge of financial support that’s come in just in the last five days to our party. And I think Canadians like the fact that we’re standing up and fighting for the unemployed and not chomping at the bit to try and fight an election. And so, we’ll, we’ll keep on this path and try to get those results.

Tags: cat, Jack Layton, NDP, pigeons

More by Paul Wells

http://intensedebate.com/people/Wascally_Wabbit Wascally_Wabbit

Is someone suggesting that the biblical "30 pieces of silver" actually amounts to only CDN$4 million according to current valuations?
http://intensedebate.com/people/YYZ YYZ

Unloading the question is my favourite! What a brilliant way of putting it.
Calgary Junkie

Jack should step down as leader (for health reasons or whatever), Dippers then ask the Greens to join them in merging the parties, and elect a leader of the new, stronger, principled left-wing alternative to Harper.

Solves lots of problems. Makes the Dipper/Greens the centre of attention for a few months. They can springboard off the leadership selection into a general election. It's all too logical. Which means it won't happen, given Jack's huge ego.
Holly Stick

9. Answer: "Well, you may think so, Paul, but I couldn't possibly comment."
(House of Cards)
RayK

Paul,

You’ve made two serious errors in this post and I believe you should issue a correction.

First, the book to which you link is about the 2006 election –not the last election as you claim.

Second, the source you cite clearly states that in 2006 election the NDP used "the building in which its headquarters were located and central and riding rebates to be provided by the state". That is to say, the NDP DID NOT use the per-vote subsidy as collateral for their election loan.
Jonathan

Maybe I'm missing something, but aren't the central rebates and the per-vote subsidy the same thing? And in Wells' follow-up question, he said that the building wasn't the only source of collateral. In other words – the point that Wells made (that the NDP used their per-vote subsidy) is correct, and doesn't exclude them using other collateral as well (since he's clearly aware that they did).
Lord Kitchener's Own

On the rebates v. subsidy, the rebates are rebates you get for spending. They're returns on money spent for the campaign, up to a certain limit, and given a certain level of minimum vote-getting success. The subsidy is a per vote subsidy given to the parties unrelated to their spending.
RayK

You are, indeed, missing something.

First, the central rebates and the per-vote subsidy are not the same thing. Completely different things, in fact. No connection whatsoever. The central rebates have existed for decades, while the per-vote subsidy was created in 2004 as a substitute for corporate and union donations.

Seocnd, the source Wells cites (the link in his post) specifically contradicts both of Wells claims on what the NDP did and did not use as collateral. It says the NDP DID use their building as collateral and that they used their rebates as collateral, not the per-vote subsidy.