Tom Flanagan, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's former national campaign manager, says the opposition parties are "dumb" to kill the practice of sending out political flyers into unheld ridings across the country because it's one small way for them to stay "politically competitive" by breaking through the "government-assisted monopoly" of communicating with voters.

"Modern campaigning is all about identifying your supporters and getting them to vote," he told The Hill Times last week. "I could never understand why the other parties didn't do the same thing. What are they, dumb? The resource is there, why not use it? It's actually more useful to an opposition party."

At the same time, he said the estimated annual cost of at least $12.1-million for the Ten Percenters has gotten out of hand and he understands the argument for cutting back in a time of austerity.

"With my taxpayer hat on, I say, let's get rid of it," he said. "With my party strategist hat on, I say, why are the Liberals such stupid whiners? Why can't they just see something that works and just do it?"

Prof. Flanagan, who teaches political science at the University of Calgary and is a well-known pundit, said when he worked as Mr. Harper's chief of staff in 2002 to 2003 the party started "cranking up" the use of Ten Percenters, which he said were useful to identifying political supporters and to eventually winning targeted seats.

Prof. Flanagan credits the Ten Percenters, in part, to helping the party win seats in Ontario, for instance.

He said every one of those ridings was on the party's targeted list when it was in opposition, and although the Ten Percenter program was not decisive in helping the party win those Ontario seats, he said it was useful to making inroads by identifying potential supporters and compiling databases. In the held ridings, the parties have lists of tens of thousands of supporters that can be pulled up on election day, but it's more difficult to do this in unheld ridings.

"MPs have all kinds of resources for communicating with voters in their own ridings. This was one little thing that allowed other parties to break through the government-assisted monopoly of communications that the existing MP enjoys in his own riding, so it was actually an attempt to make politics more competitive. I think that hasn't been properly explained," said Prof. Flanagan. "You can actually defend the program. It may have gotten a bit exaggerated, but I think the actual impulse behind it was defensible. Given the extent to which the government subsidizes MPs to communicate with their voters in their own ridings, this was a small attempt to allow opposition parties to redress the balance. So we grabbed it and ran with it and it was very useful. If you knew what you were doing, you could make this really help you if you were an opposition party."

He said even if only one per cent of voters responded to the Ten Percenters by checking off response coupons out of one million political flyers sent out each month, it represented 10,000 voters' intentions. The political flyers are sent into contested ridings where a party wants to win, and if the party keeps sending out one million flyers month after month, it can find useful numbers of supporters, Prof. Flanagan said.

The Ten Percenters cost $12.1-million last year, according to the House of Commons Speaker's Office, including $5.2-million for the out-of-riding Ten Percenters.

According to the House, from 2006 to 2007, the total number of Ten Percenters actually went up from 50 million to 86 million and 114.5 million at the end of last year to 201 million this year.

Conservative MP Peter Goldring (Edmonton East, Alta.) told The Hill Times in December that the Ten Percenters are done by the Conservative Research Group, not MPs. The Liberal say the same of their party, according to The Canadian Press.

On March 16, a Liberal motion calling on the Commons Board of Internal Economy, a multi-party committee that administers the budget of the House of Commons, to end the out-of-riding Ten Percenter program passed with the support of the three opposition parties. The Conservatives, who were responsible for 69 per cent of all Ten Percenters sent out last year, voted against the motion but then soon after declared they would support ending the practice at the BOIE. The Liberals accounted for only 13 per cent of Ten Percenter traffic, followed the NDP at 11 per cent, and the Bloc at seven per cent.

Liberal MP Marcel Proulx (Hull-Aylmer, Que.), his party's representative on the BOIE, acknowledged that ending the out-of-riding Ten Percenters is cutting off one of the opposition parties' communications tools. He's participated in regroupings with other Liberal MPs in the past to "promote our values," but he said the Tories made the content of the flyers so vitriolic that there was no choice but to scrap the program.

"It is another tool but let's face it, the way it has been used by some of the parties being so negative it's almost like hatred publications, so there's no sense. I think that Ten Percenters are a good tool if they're used properly, but obviously some parties, some MPs have exaggerated and have gone to the extreme," said Mr. Proulx.

The motion marks the first time Parliament has passed a motion directing the BOIE to do something, although former House of Commons procedural clerk Thomas Hall said from a legal standpoint the board doesn't actually have to comply. Like the recent NDP motion to limit the Prime Minister's power to prorogue, it cranks up the political pressure but ultimately it's in the hands of the nine board members.

"The Liberal Ten Percenter resolution was a good way of getting out into the public arena what would have been discussed behind closed doors in the BOIE," said Mr. Hall.

The BOIE, which meets privately once every two or three weeks, started to consider the motion last week, but according to Mr. Proulx there were other things on the agenda that took precedence. The board meets again on Monday, where he said the matter would be taken up again although it's unclear when the action to end the out-of-riding Ten Percenters would be completed.

The politically hot Ten Percenter issue has led to questions about the veil of secrecy behind which the BOIE operates. The board has two main areas of financial concern, MPs' entitlements, such as office budgets and expenses, and the House of Commons administration, which costs $440-million to run, with an additional $93-million spent running the Senate. Last February Auditor General Sheila Fraser entered into negotiations with the BOIE about auditing Parliament's budget, which are ongoing. The House of Commons has not been audited since 1991, and so far board members have shown little enthusiasm for opening the books to the AG or the public.

"There are different subjects that are being discussed at the Board of Internal Economy that you don't necessarily want to be out in the open," said Mr. Proulx, citing staffing issues and legal actions involving MPs as examples of things that should be kept private. "That's why all board members are sworn to secrecy. I don't think the board should be open for everybody to see and listen, and to hear and to read."

Mr. Hall believes that while it could still be a ways off, the board will eventually have to make public MPs' individual expenditures.

"I agree with Marcel Proulx that you don't want to put staffing issues and details of personal matters up on a website. But the public needs to know about the financial support given MPs who are involved in legal actions. They could perhaps make a distinction between legal actions involving an MP's staff and legal actions such as [Liberal MP] Borys Wrzesnewski's. As you may recall, he is defending himself against a lawsuit by Barbara George for words he spoke outside the House. Since legal actions involving outsiders are not really internal to the House, but the BOIE is spending public money on them, details of those actions should be made public," said Mr. Hall in an email to The Hill Times.

He said it's obvious why MPs don't want their spending allowances to be up for public consumption, but he said it's no reason to withhold that information from taxpayers.

"The real issue is that MPs are always afraid they'll be attacked in public. All the more reason to make public their expenditures and their requests for legal support. Their fear of negative publicity should not move them to keep secret from the public how they use the public's money. Instead it should motivate them to spend wisely and carefully."

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