Monday, March 26, 2007

More Conservative Candidate Buying?

OTTAWA (CP) - The Ontario Provincial Police have launched an investigation into a sworn affidavit that claims a senior Tory close to Prime Minister Stephen Harper was involved in an alleged bid to buy off an Ottawa mayoralty candidate.

"It's an ongoing investigation at this point," Sgt. Christine Rae of the OPP's east region headquarters in Smiths Falls, Ont., said Monday.

The affidavit, sworn out by former mayoralty candidate Terry Kilrea, names John Reynolds, the co-chairman of the 2006 Conservative election campaign, as the federal contact in a purported Parole Board appointment offer by eventual winner Larry O'Brien. In return, Kilrea was to drop out of Ottawa's 2006 municipal race.

Now we know why the Jim Hart fax surfaced when it did.

This is what the Conservatives will be talking about for the next twenty or thirty news cycles. Not the shiny new budget, not 'settling the fiscal balance', not the environment (small favours) they certainly don't want to campaign with this hanging over their heads.

You have to kind of admire how carefully constructed the timing of this looks. Its never a wise idea to forget how good the Liberal organization is at the lead pipe school of politics.

Hat-tip to Impolitical

1 comment:

Mike said...

It's going to get better...John Baird and Pierre Poilievre are closely linked to Mayor Larry and were once very good buddies with Kilrea.

Part of the allegation was that Kilrea was promised a plumb job on the National Parole Board (he's a corrections officer by trade).

Now, who do you think has the power to make THAT happen? A Mayor? Or a Federal Cabinet Minister and his Parliamentary Secretary?

Oh this is going to get very interesting...

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