bribery

Thursday September 21, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday September 21, 2017

What happens when the big tent is a mirage

At this rate, Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Patrick Brown will be fighting the looming election on crutches, the result of his own party repeatedly shooting him in both feet.

August 23, 2017

Already facing numerous controversies and even a police investigation around candidate nominations, the PCs wounded themselves yet again, this time with the local riding association in Cambridge accusing party headquarters of rigging the nomination process in favour of its preferred candidates. The party apparently shortened the nomination deadline, arbitrarily and without consultation, so that local candidates planning to run were left with insufficient time to sell enough memberships to be competitive. The preferred candidates, critics charge, are already signed up and selling so locals won’t have a legitimate shot.

Party brass deny the allegations, but the damage is done, especially considering that this scandal is just one of many all around the same thing: PC party management overriding local members in making nomination decisions. Three local riding associations and numerous executives have resigned in protest. A former minister under Mike Harris has said electing Brown would be the worst possible choice. Allegations include ballot-stuffing, falsified membership forms, party-funded memberships and other irregularities.

Criticizing Brown and his team for this is like shooting fish in a barrel. Suffice it to say they’ve had months to make an impression. They’ve made one, all right, but it features corruption allegations, disdain for the grassroots and undemocratic behaviour. Hardly the sort of momentum they had hoped to create heading into the election next June.

September 12, 2017

In fairness, the PCs may be the poster children for this sort of nonsense, but the NDP and Liberals have had their own troubles, though not to the same degree. And the worst part? It’s completely unnecessary.

Parties have the right to choose their candidate in any riding, and party HQ is the final authority. They just need to be honest and transparent. It’s a tough sell, admittedly, but surely just saying out of the gate that a candidate has been chosen is preferable to making promises of grassroots inclusivity, accepting party membership fees and then kicking sand in the face of local riding associations.

The optics of having party central choose candidates are not good, granted. It’s tough to sell a big-tent, inclusive party vision while suits in boardrooms quietly make critical candidate decisions. But in the case of the Ontario PCs, that’s what is happening, and they’re compounding the problem by claiming to be one thing but demonstrating through their actions they are the polar opposite. Hand-pick candidates if that’s what you want to do. But at least have the integrity to be honest about it. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

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Tuesday September 12, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday September 12, 2017

Liberals enduring two scandal trials

Two Ontario Liberals went to trial last Thursday on Election Act bribery charges stemming from a 2015 byelection in Sudbury, but the stakes are also high for Premier Kathleen Wynne herself.

 

December 18, 2015

The Sudbury trial happens nearly simultaneously with another Liberal trial – related to the cancellation of two gas plants – which makes for terrible optics for the party. But while that second trial involves staffers for former premier Dalton McGuinty, the Sudbury scandal is one forged entirely under Wynne’s tenure.

The premier herself is set to testify on Sept. 13.

“Politically, it’s not good,” said Nadia Verrelli, an assistant political science professor at Sudbury’s Laurentian University.

Regardless of the outcome, it may focus the provincial election campaign – with a vote nine months away – on questions about the Liberals’ integrity rather than their policies, she said.

Pat Sorbara, at the time the Ontario Liberal Party CEO, faces two charges and Gerry Lougheed, a Sudbury Liberal fundraiser, faces one charge. They both deny wrongdoing.

September 29, 2015

In late 2014, the Sudbury riding became vacant when the New Democrat who won it five months earlier stepped down for health reasons. The Liberals had their eye on winning back a riding that until 2014 they held for about two decades.

Andrew Olivier, who was the Liberals’ candidate in the riding in the general election, wanted to run again, but Wynne had other ideas. She ended up successfully luring the riding’s NDP MP – Glenn Thibeault – to run for the provincial Liberals.

One of Sorbara’s charges relates to an allegation she promised to get Thibeault “an office or employment” to induce him to become a candidate, which both deny.

Sorbara and Lougheed are alleged to have offered Olivier a job or appointment in exchange for stepping aside for Thibeault, who was ultimately given the post of energy minister last year.

Wynne has said that she had already decided Olivier would not be the byelection candidate by the time Sorbara and Lougheed spoke to him, therefore anything offered was not in exchange for stepping aside. Rather, Wynne says, she was trying to keep him in the party fold. (Source: Global News)