The Conservative party of Canada has been making a big deal out of accountability during this election campaign. The following quote is from Harper Makes Commitment to Clean Up Government.

Stephen Harper said today his first piece of legislation as Prime Minister will be to introduce a new Federal Accountability Act designed to end the influence of big money in Ottawa and crack down on a lobbying culture that has thrived under Paul Martin.

To their credit, the Conservatives do outline some good ideas for dealing with this problem in the quoted article.

However, it would appear that at least one current Conservative MP is not a stranger to accepting money from lobby groups. From The Sad Reality of Copyright Policy in Canada:

In fact, notwithstanding the Conservatives’ claims of accountability, new research indicates that Oda is no stranger to funding support. According to her 2004 riding association data, she accepted thousands of dollars in contributions from the broadcast lobby. Corporate supporters included Alliance Atlantis, Astral Media, Canwest, and CHUM.

Doc Searls has been writing about markets being a conversation for quite a while now. Despite reading a lot of his stuff, (minus the Cluetrain Manifesto which I have been meaning to buy) I never really understood what he was talking about until I read TV News in a Postmodern World which Doc recently linked to.

Searching for stuff on Technorati is quite interesting.

I discovered an article in the Globe and Mail written by a London doctor. He discusses how hospitals are funded in Ontario. The post that led me to the article is called More on a rational view for healthcare and wait times.

Like a lot of Canadians, I would like to believe that somehow our elected officials are immune to being overly influenced by special interest groups.

Unfortunately, I now know of one example where this is not the case. I find it incredibly hard to believe that Ms. Bulte thinks this is acceptable behavior.