Bulte (Canadian MP) gets big entertainment bucks, promises new copyrights

Sam Bulte, the Canadian Liberal Party MP for Parkdale/High Park is having her election campaign bankrolled by the Canadian entertainment cartel. Bulte previously authored a one-sided report proposing crazy, US-style copyright laws for Canada, and now her pals from the Canadian Recording Industry Association are throwing her a $250/plate fundraiser -- just the kind of high-ticket event that the poor artists Bulte claims to represent can't afford to attend. Instead, expect this dinner to be stacked with industry fat-cats.

Bulte fired off an angry letter to the Toronto Star in 2004 when columnist Michael Geist outed her for leading the effort to rewrite Canadian copyright laws after collecting big donations from the entertainment industry. Here she is again, though: hoovering up giant corporate bucks while campaigning to deliver just the kind of copyright laws that will make crooks out of ordinary Canadians and line the pockets of massive, US-owned entertainment companies.

The sponsors of this event, to be held four days before the election?

* Doug Frith (President of Canadian Motion Pictures Distributors Association)
* Graham Henderson (CRIA President)
* Jackie Hushion (Executive Director of the Canadian Publishers Council)
* Danielle LaBoisserre (Executive Director of the Entertainment Software Alliance) and
* Stephen Stohn (DeGrassi producer).

Within the boundaries of the Election Act, MPs are of course free to fundraise any way they like and individual Canadians are free to contribute to those same MPs. However, with the public's cynicism about elected officials at an all-time high and Canadians increasingly frustrated by a copyright policy process that is seemingly solely about satisfying rights holder demands, is it possible to send a worse signal about the impartiality of the copyright reform process?

Bulte's NDP opponent is Peggy Nash, the Tory candidate is Jurij Klufas Link