The Globe and Mail carries two reports today about the Liberal Party leadership campaign. Both suggest there is some house cleaning to be done still.
It seems almost all the leadership candidates have been sending email from their federally funded MPs' offices. This stuff may once have been considered harmless - everyone expects paid staff to be supporters of the MP and candidate and what are a few emails, the cost of sending of which is too small to measure.
Such is no longer the case, especially for the Liberal Party which must appear, in the wake of the sponsorship fiasco, to be cleaner than clean. Paid staff are free to work for the candidate on their own time, but if they are sending mail from the office, are they working on the campaign on taxpayers' time? Are federally funded offices (furniture, computers, copiers) being used for campaign purposes? This is the kind of thing that leads to criminal charges in the USA. If the Liberals and the candidates want to regain Canadian's confidence it has to stop NOW.
The Globe also reports that Joe Volpe is under pressure from party leaders and MPs to withdraw from the leadership race and remove the taint of his questionable fundraising (corporate contributions disguised as donations from children). I agree, Joe should go and go now.
