By Brian Lilley
Fundraisers where high end donors get to have face time with powerful ministers in Justin Trudeau’s cabinet have dominated headlines and questions in the House of Commons for days now. The Conservatives and New Democrats have hammered the Liberals over events like Finance Minister Bill Morneau’s appearance at a fundraiser hosted at a Halifax mansion and attended by corporate executives that could benefit from Morneau’s spending.
The minister was on a budget consultation tour at the time of the fundraiser last week.
One thing that has left political watchers puzzled, until now, is why the Halifax fundraiser for Morneau along with similar events in Toronto and Calgary did not appear on the Liberal Party website where events such as fundraisers normally appear.
It turns out that the Liberals have been using a simple piece of coding on their website to block certain fundraisers from being seen by the general public or found by search engines like Google.
“It isn’t really out in the public,” said Stephen Taylor a long time conservative who runs online businesses that have used the robots.txt file that the Liberals have used.
Taylor told Beyond the News with Brian Lilley that the robots.txt file is used by web designers to hide backend pages such as administrative panels or membership pages.
What the Liberals have done is also include several fundraisers for Morneau and International Trade Minister Chrystia Freeland.
That flies in the face of what Liberal House Leader Bardish Chagger said in the Commons in response to repeated questions on Morneau’s high-priced and secretive fundraiser.
“This event was open, and anyone who purchased a ticket was welcome to attend. The event was made public online,” Chagger said.
Except that the fundraiser could not be found by the general public by visiting the Liberal website or via a Google search.
NDP MP Murray Rankin said the other worrying aspect is what the Liberals are trading for such access.
“People are not going to this fundraiser in a fancy mansion in Halifax for the good of their health,” Rankin told CFRA.
Rankin said while some at the fundraiser would have been party stalwarts, others would be looking to use the fundraiser to gain favourable access for their business.
He also accused the Liberals of putting fundraising first ahead of real public consultations.
Conservative MP Candice Bergen told the Commons that such fundraisers with special access are wrong.
“It is clear the Minister of Finance was charging a price and then giving special access to individuals who could benefit from that access,” Bergen said.
The Liberals maintain they have broken no laws or rules on fundraising, a party spokesman even saying via email it would be wrong to call the events hidden even though the public cannot see any information about them.
Spokesperson Braeden Caley said information such as the home of a host must be protected.
An editorial in The Globe and Mail on Thursday compared Trudeau’s fundraising practices to those of Ontario Liberal Premier Kathleen Wynne who was embarrassed into promising to change fundraising rules after media reports exposed a cash for access scheme at Queen’s Park.