More Coverage of Liberal Staff Bizarre Attacks at PC Leadership Convention
I promised I would show the attack buttons the Liberal Caucus Services Bureau (a publicly funded, partisan arm of the Premier’s Office that is used entirely for partisan purposes). Unfortunately, after my first video, Liberal staffers steered clear and no buttons, press releases or other liberal attacks were dropped off.
I did get my hands on a couple of the ‘Frank Klees Leadership Kits’ I had seen Liberal Caucus Services Bureau and Minister’s Office staff handing out earlier in the day. That’s what you’ll see in the video below. It’s another bizarre attack and a total waste of taxpayer resources by Dalton McGuinty to advance his partisan interests. This has nothing to do with policy, or even Queen’s Park for that matter – it’s taxpayer money doing the bidding of the Ontario Liberal Party. It is also literally a ‘skin deep’ attack on a man who had the courage to seek to lead his party.
For a guy whose running the largest deficit Ontario has ever seen, I have a really good idea – cut crap like this right out. Stop using public tax dollars for partisan purposes, stop sending taxpayer funded staff to your opponents events and conventions in hopes of slamming them right out of the gate and respect the fact that using public resources to cling to power is both highly improper and totally undemocratic. Sure you probably wouldn’t win without it, but that doesn’t make it right, and frankly it makes this crutch all the more pathetic.
I recognize me speaking out on this likely makes the threat of Liberal Caucus Services Bureau’s highly improper use of public resources against me, should I seek public office, all the more likely – and my simple response is this – I’ve exposed LCSB’s actions this weekend on principle in my role as accredited media. If I was the victim of a campaign using public resources highly improperly, I would seek a legal recourse, and publicly expose and condemn it as well. That would be both principled and personal.
It is my hope that both the Ontario NDP and Ontario PC parties will help ensure this cat is routinely let out of the bag, so that the people of Ontario know what the Premier and his staff are up to. It not only levels the playing field, but also ensures elections in Ontario are both free and fair – something they are not if one party has a massive publicly funded arm that would make it so even if the NDP and PCs played the same game in response – their resources would not compare.
Update: Big City Lib finds humour in this bigcitylib.blogspot.com/2009/06/where-does-he-keep-his-crucifix.html
I don’t seek martyrdom, or the political equivalent. I don’t own a crucifix, and have no intention of ‘one day getting them all’ – whatever that means. But I do believe in fairness, and free and fair elections. Elections without fear, intimidation, cheating etc.
I think that’s important. It should be a pre-condition to accepting a victory, because a victory without a free and fair election is not a victory at all, its a seizure of power. Some folks are so focused on winning they lose a sense of what’s right. I’d rather lose an honest fight, than win an unfair one. My point in this post and others over the weekend, is that some folks have lost sight of that – the good thing is Ontarians are good at sniffing out tired governments and have a tendency of not electing them.
Tags: Dalton McGuinty, Frank Klees Leadership Kit, LCSB, Liberal Caucus Services Bureau, Ontario Liberal Party, Ontario Liberal Party Attacks, Ontario PC Convention
June 29th, 2009 at 11:06 am
[...] Laforet writes more about this at [...]
June 29th, 2009 at 11:33 am
John you act the other parties are so pure, EVERY party does this at EVERY convention. While I agree it is unfortuante, to just single out the OLP and act the NDP and PC Party don’t do this (or didn’t use the Premier’s office for partisan purposes when they were in office) is just simply bizarre.
Were you at the federal Liberal Leadership convention in Montreal in 2006? CPC/NDP misleading press releases and buttons and observers were all over the place. Did you see the Tory AND NDP observers bashing Ignatieff in whatever way they could with falsehoods?
Why don’t you focus on the FAR MORE misleading Tory attacks on Ignatieff?
It’s because you have a vendetta against OLP that’s why.
Btw you rant against LCSB being this evil publicly funded arm of the Ontario Liberal Party, but EVERY party has this, and federally the Liberal Party of Canada has the Liberal Research Bureau (LRB) which operates in EXACTLY the same way (in terms of press releases and partisan material at leas), so again you single out the OLP ONLY because of your vendetta.
I’ll give you credit that you do cover many issues well, but when you get on the topic of LCSB or OLP or McGuinty your bias COMPLETELY shows through, and next time you might try for a little more balance showing what the other parties do as well.
June 29th, 2009 at 11:39 am
Only thing bizzare on here is author
June 29th, 2009 at 11:39 am
At this convention I did not see a single New Democrat – elected or staff. Others in the media room confirmed no New Democrats were present. No NDP attacks were handed out.
Therefore – I dispute that every party does this at every convention.
LRB is very different from LCSB – I was a federal Liberal Riding President – I know this to be true.
I do rant against LCSB because the Liberals are the ones in power and cynically using this unfair resource. Even if the other parties do use it as well – it is still wrong, and the Liberals have a incredibly unfair advantage, by having such a massive budget in comparison to other parties.
For the record I believe none should use public resources for partisan gain and compliment the Ontario NDP for not doing so this weekend.
June 29th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Echoing John from above… he’s right: ALL the parties have their own caucus services who produce partisan work. The LCSB is not unique to politics. All parties receive funding through the Ontario Legislative Assembly, because hey, guess what? Tax dollars go towards democracy!
June 29th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
I think it’s a pretty weak defense on the part of those above to say, in essence, “well, others do it too”.
These videos do not dispute that others have used tactics like this before, and they likely will in the future as well. It is a general malaise in politics. This does not make it right to do it.
I do not think this is a question of any sort of bias on John’s part in terms of covering Liberal abuses of resources and not others. It was just as much my decision to cover this issue as it was John’s, and I have absolutely no vendetta against the Liberal party. In fact, if an election were held today, I could very well see myself voting for them.
So please cut out this argument that it’s John’s bias trying to create a scandal. Completely untrue.
These pieces of what are likely publicly funded propaganda were literally put into our hands. That is why we are covering it. We were handed these absurd materials and were told “you might find this interesting.” We found it very interesting and decided to cover it. We saw it as doing our job as accredited media to cover what we saw as both ridiculous and frivolous attacks. “The road ahead”, white teeth, gel and tanned skin – you guys think these are worthy attacks?
Yeah, the equivalent of LCSB existed under past governments and likely those governments made improper use of their resources as well. We weren’t there to witness it or report on it. It wasn’t placed into our hands as this was.
So, yes, this isn’t a one-party problem. However, we encountered it coming from the Liberal party and reported on it. We should not get caught thinking that things are okay or at least something that needs to be done just because all parties do it.
June 30th, 2009 at 10:11 am
It seems like the thing to do would be to extract promises from the Hudak and Horwath camps that they would put an end to similar operations and push through legislation that would prevent their re-establishment by future Premiers. Not that campaign promises mean anything, but it would be a positive sign.
I can’t dispute that something cynical and of questionable taste is going on, but as someone with a particularly vivid memory of entirely negative ad hominem campaigns against both Lynn McCloud and Dalton McGuinty (nevermind this gem from the federal Tory playbook) I’ve got to say that what I’ve seen out of the OLP strikes me as pretty tame.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:33 am
Hi David,
I think your idea of promises from both Horwath and Hudak would be wise. Particularly if each would then call on the Premier to not use an unfair publicly funded advantage during the next election.
I completely agree with you that Mike Harris practiced an extremely negative ad campaign against both McLeod and McGuinty, but at the same time if you recall – the issue of Harris using public money was his use of positive ads of himself paid for with public money in between elections.
McGuinty thought that was such a bad thing – he passed a law forbidding future Premier’s from doing the same. (He also found the way around his own law, by giving $25k to the TTC to publicly thank him with billboards by name for funding Transit City).
I’m sure when Rae was in power he too used resources in a similar way to McGuinty, Eves, Harris and others, it still doesn’t make it right and feeds into a cynicism that hurts our politics.
Its like electoral reform – every opposition leader loves it, until they become leader and then they forget all about it. We need to change that ‘it’s ok if it’s broken – so long as it favours us’ mentality.