Canadian legislator apologizes for offering shout-outs to small donors on the floor of Parliament

(Image credit: NDP)

last updated 8 January 2015

One of the youngest members of Canada's Parliament has now had to back away from a unique online fundraising campaign. The problem: It technically involved offering to make statements on the floor of Parliament in exchange for political donations.

Charmaine Borg, a member of the left-wing New Democratic Party, promised that in exchange for donations of $50 (that is, Canadian dollars), she would name each individual donor on the floor of the House of Commons. And in exchange for $1,000, CBC News reports, Borg would have said on the floor of the House, "Resistance is futile" — a reference to the Borg villains from Star Trek: The Next Generation, and to her own last name.

Borg was elected to Parliament in 2011 at only 20 years old — one of the many surprise wins in the NDP's huge breakthrough that year throughout the province of Québec, which propelled the party into second place nationally for the first time ever. Now age 23, she currently serves as the NDP's official spokesperson on digital issues. And now in her latest digital communication, she has apologized for this fundraising experiment. --Eric Kleefeld