24 Hours (Vancouver);

The president of the Liberal Party of Canada’s B.C. branch was under subpoena for over three months to testify in the upcoming breach of trust trial of former provincial government aides David Basi and Bob Virk before resigning his position in January.
Lobbyist Jamie Elmhirst quit as president Jan. 15 but was subpoenaed by police Oct. 4, 2006 to testify. His letter of resignation to the party makes no mention of the subpoena, instead stating he was leaving to concentrate on his business and upcoming wedding.
Elmhirst, a former aide to B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell and former federal Liberal cabinet minister David Anderson, was a business partner of Erik Bornmann and Brian Kieran in the now-defunct Victoria lobby firm Pilothouse Public Affairs.
Both Bornmann and Kieran will testify as crown witnesses against Basi, Virk and B.C. Liberal government communications aide Aneal Basi in the trial starting April 2.
On Dec. 28, 2003, the same day police searched the B.C. Legislature and other locations, a search warrant was executed on Pilothouse offices.
The charges allege that David Basi and Virk were bribed to provide confidential information on the $1-billion privatization of BC Rail to Bornmann, who was a lobbyist for OmniTRAX, one of the bidders. Aneal Basi is accused of money laundering.

Just another bad week to have won the Liberal leadership.

h/t reader Steven

Is Liberal-friendly Jim Patterson setting up Telecaster to run interference in a future election campaign ?

[W]hen the Liberals rolled out their attack ads, claiming Stephen Harper was going to put “soldiers in our streets”. It was absurd, and it backfired.
The point is Telecaster*, run by Jim Patterson, didn’t censor them, even though they used images of Stephen Harper without his permission.
But when the Conservatives produced a response to those attack ads — showing video clips of Liberal MPs admitting their own attack ads had gone too far — Telecaster censored the ads. Telecaster ordered the Conservative ads off the air.
The story gets worse: Telecaster yanked the ads after a complaint from the CBC, because it was their footage that captured the MPs making those statements. The CBC actively intervened to knock Conservative ads off the air. And the Telecaster censor, who just happened to be a major Liberal donor, was happy to comply.
Isn’t that a cosy little family?
Has the CBC ever complained about the Liberals using images of Conservative politicians taken from CBC cameras? Don’t be ridiculous. The CBC is a wing of the Liberal Party — the left wing.
When it’s not busy trying to yank Conservative ads off the air, it’s running Liberal propaganda using tax dollars — long infomercials, thinly disguised as political talk shows or “documentaries.”
All this came out in the open last week when Telecaster refused to allow the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association to run a TV ad briefly showing Harper’s own image — even though the CRFA owned the footage themselves.

Make up your mind, Dion.

Some weeks it just doesn’t pay to win a Liberal leadership race. Google cache;

“Stéphane Dion’s ability to gain the confidence of both previous Prime Ministers despite the serious rift in the party, bespeaks his ability to pull the party together. Ontario has some excellent leadership candidates but we will never run this country without the support of Quebec. Ontario has always been fairly evenly split between the Conservative party and the Liberal party. A strong leader will sway it one way or the other so it is fairly market neutral but the weight of a Francophone Liberal from Quebec would possibly be the demise of the Bloc Quebecois party, ‘and good riddance’, this certainly would tip the balance in our favour in the next federal election. I also feel Stéphane’s commitment to environmental and social causes will pull support from the NDP out West. His combination of strengths have him way ahead of any of his contenders. Therefore, if we are to have a realistic chance of forming the next Government it only makes common sense to support Stéphane Dion.”
— Perley Holmes, Vancouver, BC

KXLY.com;

A labor leader from British Columbia has been identified as the man arrested by U.S. Border Patrol Officers last week during an attempt to smuggle 136 pounds of cocaine across the border into the United States.
Perley Holmes was one of two men who allegedly crossed the U.S. – Canada border illegally on January 18th when they were spotted by a Border Patrol agent. When he attempted to arrest them, the second man fled back across the remote border near Chesaw, Washington while Holmes was taken into custody.
[…]
At the time of Holmes’ arrest he was found with two backpacks which contained a combined 136 pounds of cocaine with an approximate value of $4.3 Million.
Holmes appeared before a magistrate Wednesday where he was ordered held over without bond. If convicted he could face ten years to life in prison.

Via National Newswatch where there’s a screenshot in case the Google cache is yanked.

Update – Already in Youtube production – The Sequel ! “Stephane’s Frantic Attempts To Throw A Bicycle Into Reverse”

From the You Can’t Make This Stuff Up Files;

Dion told Quebec newspaper Le Soleil that he has no objections to Marc-Yvan Cote being allowed to resume his Liberal membership.
Cote, a former party organizer in Quebec, was one of 10 members banned for life from the party by former prime minister Paul Martin in the wake of the sponsorship scandal.
Dion added that Cote’s punishment was “exaggerated,” and that he’d recognized his error and shouldn’t be penalized for life.
[…]
Dion noted that he thought that Cote “recognized his mistakes.”
Gerard Kennedy, Dion’s special adviser on election readiness, says each case will have to be decided on its own merits.
During the Gomery inquiry into the sponsorship scandal, Cote testified that he received $120,000 in $100 bills from the executive director of the party’s Quebec wing. He distributed that money to 12 Liberal candidates in the 1997 federal election.

Who would have guessed that a full year after Gomery and turning the page with selection of a new leader, the Liberals would pump new life into the Libranos blogging theme?
Has the Mole been promoted?

CTV;

Liberal Leader Stephane Dion accused the Conservatives on Tuesday of lacking the kind of convictions that he said his own party has on various issues.

Some jokes just write themselves.
Update Commentor Patrick notes that the CBC’s parliamentary reporter Julie Van Dusen “is now Dion’s official media interpreter”;

“Mr. Harper will never be able to imitate these convictions and Canadians know this,” he said.
Julie Van Dusen, a CBC News parliamentary reporter, said with that comment, Dion is trying to suggest the Conservatives are only concerned with staying in power.
“The Liberals feel like they can attack this approach Mr. Harper has, saying it is really just about winning seats,” she said.
“The Liberals are saying Mr. Stephen Harper is an impostor on this issue,” she added, referring to the environment.

One wonders why. It’s not as though he was speaking in French. CBC does, however, offer this;

During his speech, Dion stressed his ties to Quebec, which he called a “cradle of civilization” in Canada.

Phil Fontaine – call your office.

While his pronunciation of the English language may be as mangled as a cat in a combine, Stephane Dion does show a knack for tapping into long held Western Canadian metaphors…

“I’m not there to kill the growth, I’m there to make the growth sustainable,” he said. “I don’t want to kill the milk cow. But I want to make sure that the milk will still be good and there for our grandchildren.”

Just as it was for his grandparents.

Statement by Stéphane Dion, Leader of the Official Opposition, on the resignation from Caucus of Wajid Khan, MP for Mississauga-Streetsville

January 5, 2007
“It is with regret that I have received word of Mr. Khan’s decision to leave the Liberal Caucus and join the Conservative Party.
“As a member of the Liberal Party of Canada, I was never comfortable with Mr. Khan serving as an advisor to a Conservative Prime Minister, as Mr. Khan has done since August of last year.
“As Leader of the Party, I felt it imperative that he decide to which party he would ultimately be loyal. Mr. Khan has now made that decision.”

*

Don’t vote for the joooo…..

Sources close to Rae say that his wife, Arlene Perly Rae, was approached during last weekend’s convention by a delegate who didn’t realize she was the candidate’s wife. The delegate told her not to vote for Rae “because his wife is Jewish.”
Perly Rae stonily informed the delegate that she was the wife in question. The delegate beat a hasty retreat.
The incident might have been shrugged off if it had been an isolated event. But Rae team insiders contend it was part of a larger pattern of anti-Semitic smears on Rae, who finished third.
A flyer was circulated electronically among convention delegates denouncing Rae for having once delivered a speech to the Jewish National Fund, a group the flyer said was complicit in “war crimes and ethnic cleansing.”
“Rae’s wife is a vice-president of the CJC (Canadian Jewish Congress), a lobby group which supports Israeli apartheid,” said the flyer in bold letters superimposed over a close-up of Rae’s face.
“Bob Rae supports Israeli apartheid. Don’t elect a leader who supports apartheid.”
The Canadian Jewish Congress has condemned the flyer and blamed Khaled Mouammar, president of the Canadian Arab Federation for circulating it. The federation has, in turn, accused the CJC of making “a pitiful attempt to discredit” it and has denied producing or distributing the flyer.
Nevertheless, in a release Thursday, the federation supported the content of the flyer.
[…]
On another website, operated by a Montreal-based pro-Palestinian group, Liberals were urged about a week before the leadership vote: “Do not vote for Bob Rae, we’re not looking or another Zionist PM.”
The group recommended that delegates vote for Gerard Kennedy, the fourth-place contender whose dramatic decision to throw his support to Stephane Dion after the second ballot clinched the victory for Dion. It said that “voting for Bob Rae is a vote for the daily massacre in Palestine (and) . . . for a new Zionist PM in Canada.”
Rae could not be reached for comment Thursday but insiders say he was aghast and hurt by the attacks.
The smears have raised broader questions about the role that blocs of ethnic delegates played at the convention in securing a stunning, come-from-behind victory for Dion.

Update Stephen Taylor has a copy of the flyer.

Still stinging over revelations concerning his own new party dauphin, Liberal MP Bill Graham alleges that an undisclosed number of Conservative Members of Parliament hold German citizenships.

The Tyee;

By the time Paul Martin had become prime minister, evicting Jean Chrétien from 24 Sussex Drive, the field of battle had been littered with the political bodies of those who stood in his way. British Columbia was a key province in the Martinites’ war for control and his lieutenants here were bloody-minded in the extreme.
[…]
[Mark Marissen] was Martin’s top lieutenant here and half of what was once B.C.’s top power couple. His wife, Christy Clark, is a former deputy premier to the B.C. Liberals’ Gordon Campbell. Marissen is now the organizational brains behind Stephane Dion…

As the party convenes to “renew itself”…

[Erik] Bornman is scheduled to testify early next year as the Crown’s key witness against former friends David Basi and Bob Virk, the fired ministerial aides he is alleged by police to have bribed in exchange for confidential government information on the $1 billion B.C. Rail privatization. Bornman, an amateur photographer, B.C. lobbyist and former Paul Martin aide, became known as “Spiderman” for his late 1990s break-in to B.C. party headquarters, where a federal membership list allegedly resided.

Bornman’s brother is working on the Dryden campaign.

Clark’s home office was searched by police, who allege in unproven police search warrant “Information To Obtain” or ITO documents that documents related to the cancelled B.C. Rail Roberts Bank privatization deal that was worth $70 million were passed by Basi to Clark. Clark does not face any charges. Not surprisingly, Bruce Clark is another enthusiastic supporter of Stephane Dion.

Political party or organized crime family? With the Liberals, it’s sometimes hard to tell the difference.

They’ve been cut from the teat.
From the office of Carol Skelton MP (Saskatoon-Biggar-Rosetown), a few details on those “spending cuts” that have “sent shockwaves through the literacy community”.

We are not cutting any literacy training. Instead, we want to refocus spending for literacy on programs that teach people how to read and write, instead of funding conferences and advocacy work.
[…]
Some of the old-style spending on literacy under the previous Liberal Government included:
Contracts for websites: $81,900, $45,000, $71,000 (with a consultant billing of $750 per day for work completed), and $70,000.
Contracts for promoting meetings: $53,760, $220,500.
Contracts to consultants: $57,905 paid to a media consultant for working 31 days, $800 per day to a consultant to develop a strategy, $206,600 paid to a researcher.
Salaries for Literacy industry executives: $151,561 per year to an Executive Director, $45,000 paid to a National Director for 50 days of work, $103,972 paid to an Executive Director for one year of work.

Read the full release here, which includes a few of the programs the spending is being rediirected to.

I wonder – would we have ever learned of the Sponsorship scheme had there existed a Canadian Advertising Board?

The wheat board has often been described as a wholly owned subsidiary of the Liberal party and a huge patronage operation for Liberal governments.
Despite its $6 billion in annual sales, and a large staff, no outside agency or official is allowed to look at its books to see just how profitable it is, where the money goes and how it is decided who gets contracts for advertising or polling.
Indeed, when the Liberal-dominated Senate sent back to the House of Commons the Conservatives’ Federal Accountability Act — that’s the act calling for more ethics and openness in government — one of the ‘amendments’ struck out by the Liberals was the guarantee to an access to information clause covering the wheat board.

“I have to go lay down.”

It’s like an onion. Peel away one layer, and you’re sure to find another.

A senior official confirmed yesterday that the Treasury Board and the Public Service Human Resources Management Agency are examining the issue following recent revelations that two former Liberal aides landed “phantom” jobs that gave them free rides into the public service after they lost their political jobs in the January election.
The Public Service Commission, the watchdog of an impartial, non-partisan public service, uncovered a scheme that created false jobs for two political staffers and immediately revoked the appointments.
[…]
Some say the cases have raised questions about how many other political staffers slipped into the public service over the years under the guise of special programs that were created for different reasons.
The commission found about 100 public servants joined ministers’ offices and went back into the public service — with no break in service — over 11 years of the previous Liberal government.
The two cases at the centre of the commission’s recent probe were bureaucrats who had taken leave without pay to work in ministers’ offices as “exempt staff” — which means they are exempt from the rules governing all bureaucrats under the Public Service Employment Act.
Their jobs had long ago been filled or disappeared and, with the election looming, they arranged for their departments — Public Works and Health Canada — to create new positions for them under a special program known within bureaucratic circles as SAPP, or Special Assignment Pay Plan.

“Liberals” … “spending” … “scathing assessment” – how can that be ???

Whine, and the world laughs at you …

First, the Liberal Party killed Youth for Volpe.
Last week, ‘Liberals for Hezbollah’ mysteriously went offline.
Now, this site’s ISP has received a letter from the Liberal Party of Canada, full of imaginary legal violations (Slander? Has a HezboLiberal Broadway-style musical opened somewhere?) and veiled threats.
My ISP has been great and has given every indication that they would stick by me through this. But, I have decided to take down the website to save them further hassles.
If the Liberal Party ever wants to repair its reputation, it has to learn that it can’t censor, threaten ordemand that Canadians ‘shut up.’ There are too many of us, and it is too easy for us to communicate these days for that sort of tactic to work anymore, in a free society.
If the Liberal Party doesn’t like what it sees on blogs and on the Internet, it has to stop doing stuff so outrageous and offensive that someone would spend an entire day building a website just to mock it.
Until that happens, you are going to have to learn to live with it.
Sincerely,
HezboLiberal.com

When the New York Times used this tactic against Robert Cox a couple of years ago, the blogosphere responded by mirroring his spoof page a dozen times over.
You know, I’d hate to see that happen in this case. Lawyers letters cost money.
h/t Maz2
Update – Well, this didn’t take long… apparently, a zip file is available for anyone who wants to duplicate the site.
Screenshot
Update – Ezra Levant, gets in on the fun.

CBC;

Liberal party officials shut down a website showing how much money leadership candidates have raised Wednesday after personal information about the hopefuls was inadvertently included.
The party had posted lists of donations received by each of the 10 candidates on its website Wednesday afternoon. However, the information was quickly pulled from the internet after the discovery that it had mistakenly included the candidates’ home phone numbers and addresses.
That wasn’t the only problem with the website, according to some of the candidates. Several camps complained that tens of thousands in donations were not included in the tallies because they hadn’t yet been processed by the Liberal party.
Candidates must funnel campaign donations through the party in order to provide tax receipts.
Hours later, many candidates released their own, more up-to-date tallies of their donations. According to their figures:
* Bob Rae had donations of $478,750 by the end of July and loans of $275,000.
* Michael Ignatieff had raised $373,922 to July 31, with loans of $125,000.
* Gerard Kennedy had raised $361,503 up to Aug. 12, with loans of $200,000.
* Joe Volpe had raised $340,000 up to July 31, with no loans.
* Scott Brison had raised $230,000 up to Aug. 22, with loans of $200,000.
* Stéphane Dion had raised $155,000 up to Aug. 22, with loans of $530,000.
* Carolyn Bennett had raised $77,350 up to Aug. 22, with a loan of $35,000.
Before the campaign donor section of the website was shut down, it showed Ken Dryden had raised $49,194, Martha Hall Findlay had amassed $36,835 and Hedy Fry had brought in $15,061 by the end of July.
The campaign is the first to be run under new federal finance rules, which limit individual donations to $5,400 and prohibit contributions from corporations and trade unions.
Many of the candidates have publicly commented on the difficulty of fundraising under the new rules.

Not to mention the difficulty of fundraising when forced to admit they’re Liberals. (“Excuse me? Isn’t that what Quebec advertising agencies are for?”)
h/t Maz2 in the comments
More on the self-destructing LPOC.

A sharp-eyed reader asks “Where’s Joe’s dough?”

In early June, Joe Volpe promised to post a list of donors on his website monthly.
On June 9, Joe Volpe posted a link to this press release on the main page of his site, here.
While that press release can still be accessed by directly going to the old URL, I can’t find any place where it is still linked to by Volpe’s site. (Though I haven’t consumed a lot of caffine this morning.)
As well, it is a month later, and there isn’t a new list..

Screenshot of press release
Volpe’s Liberal leadership campaign claims to have signed 35,000 new members. All I can say about that is “YeeHaw! Go Joe Go!”
Tuesday morning update – well that didn’t take long! SDA gets results!