OTTAWA — The Liberals are trying to save taxpayers millions and keep political junk leaflets from cluttering up homeowners’ mail boxes.
The party moved a motion Monday — to be voted on Tuesday — to end the practice of MPs mailing political leaflets into other ridings with public money.
Liberal MP Mark Holland called the mailings, called ten-percenters because MPs can only send mail into other ridings equivalent to 10 percent of the households in their own riding, “partisan advertising” and the cost shouldn’t be borne by the taxpayer.
“At a time when the government says they are going to be tightening their belts, this has got to go. It’s campaign advertising, pure and simple, and it’s time is done,” Holland said. “Canadians, when they see these in their mailboxes, know it’s hypocrisy ... it’s an abuse.”
QMI Agency discovered last year that the cost for the mailings — all paid for by taxpayers — had jumped from $5.9 million in 2005 shortly after the Conservatives took power to more than $10 million in 2008-2009.
This year, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation gave the ten-percenters the federal waste award.
Kevin Gaudet, the association’s federal director, said the Liberal’s motion to end the ten-percenter practice “rocks.
“Junk mail bugs people at the best of times, but to have it be junk mail that we’ve paid for ourselves that we don’t want drives people insane,” Gaudet said.
bryn.weese@sunmedia.ca
