They also at the time directly funded political activity through per-vote financing, as well as reimbursing a major amount of campaign expenses for any riding where the candidate wins over a certain percentage of the votes.
[2] The Bloc organized "La Méthode In & Out" prior to the elections, having each candidate agree to certain spending numbers in order to inflate the overall cash flows.
Large amounts of cash were transferred from the party organization to the individual riding associations that are in charge of running one candidate's election campaign.
[2] When the story broke in 2003 as a result of the court case, the ruling Liberal Party immediately started to implement changes to the election law to stop this process.
In this case of "in and out", it is held that the scheme was not only intended as a method of gaining additional income, but also as a way to avoid limitations on campaign spending at the national level.
Investigator Ronald Lamothe questioned Retail Media about the invoices, notably one for $39,999.91 sent by Steve Halicki's campaign for the riding of York South-Weston.
In April 2007 the Chief Electoral Officer, Marc Mayrand, refused to pay the refunds, totaling about $780,000,[7] stating that the party had paid for the ads.
[4] In an obvious parallel with the Bloc events of a decade earlier, the Conservative Party decided to sue Elections Canada to get the money back.
[4] On 15 April 2008, Elections Canada and Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) officers raided the Conservative party headquarters in Ottawa.
Lamothe's affidavit noted: "a deliberate 'in-and-out' scheme conceived to move money from national coffers into and out of the accounts of local campaigns, which have their own spending limits, in order to skirt the national spending limit... Funds were transferred into and out of each of the bank accounts of the 67 campaigns ... entirely under the control of and at the direction of officials of the Conservative Fund of Canada and/or the Conservative Party of Canada...
[8]Sam Goldstein, who ran what The Ottawa Citizen described as a Conservative "token campaign" against Olivia Chow in Trinity—Spadina, later went on record stating that he agrees that the transfers were to pay for national ads.
The Prime Minister only responded directly to the questions on one occasion, challenging the Liberals to make their accusations outside the chamber where they were not protected from parliamentary privilege.
Heather MacIvor at the University of Windsor noted that the Conservatives were being disingenuous, and that it was the intent to receive the Elections Canada funds that constituted the "in and out".
At the time, the committee was chaired by Conservative Gary Goodyear, who the opposition parties claim used his position to delay any debate on the issue, including hours of filibuster.
The Conservatives claimed to have won a victory when their case against Elections Canada returned a decision suggesting that the body had overstepped its mandate.
They join similar claims made earlier by David Marler of Quebec, and Dave Mackenzie of Ontario, who was noted as also refusing the funds although he has not spoken publicly on the issue.
[18] On March 6, 2012, charges were dropped as part of a plea deal which saw the Conservative Party plead guilty over the "In and Out" scandal, agreeing to repay $230,198 for its role in the scheme.