Massive raids and mysterious police moves completely unrelated to newfound desire to curry favour with drug and homicide squads, says Toronto mayor, adding: “I do not, nor have I ever, used crack cocaine at any point so far this morning.”
UPDATE: Chief Blair is unmoved.
Kinsella says that McGuinty was a “winner.”
“He had many, many policy achievements,” he said.
After working/volunteering for the guy for more than a decade, I still respect and admire him. However, I was heartbroken over what happened late last week – as I said to some equally-shocked Liberal friends, “Chretien would have never, ever done that to any of us, even if we deserved it.”
My relationship with Chretien was different – basically, I had one. Lots of words are often used to describe McGuinty: friendly, gregarious, funny, and so on. They’re all true. But another description is also true: “aloof.” He was, for most of us, impossible to know well.
I don’t know if it was a case of people around him keeping him away from others. I don’t know if it was him, and that he favoured privacy. Whatever the reason, he was (and is) an enigma wrapped in a mystery.
He made mistakes, as we all do. Personally, I thought it was a big mistake to not immediately resign when a new leader was selected. I thought prorogation was probably unnecessary. I thought that damned press release – which I cannot get over – was a mistake.
Most of all, I thought it was a mistake not to do what Chretien always taught us: fight back. Fight, fight, fight: never give any quarter. Never give up. Admit that you’ve lost battles, sure, but never the war.
I will have more to say about this in Sunday’s Sun. But, in the meantime, I wish him and his family well. As no less than this guy showed us, on the same day, people eventually forgive and forget.
…has apparently unburdened himself of a few opinions about Yours Truly on Newstalk 1010.
Anyone know where a reliable transcript/tape may be found?
You know why.
Even if I didn’t dislike McGregor intensely – for letting neo-Nazis know where we lived, among other things – I’d say Adams won this match. “No comment” is seldom an option. Kudos to Adams for (a) staking out her position and (b) showing once again that you can take Glen out of Frank magazine, but you can’t take the Frank magazine out of Glen.
“Grits suffer the bitter agony of delete”
In comparative terms, you might think stealing taxpayer dollars — or smoking crack — are a bit more serious than deleting personal e-mails. But you’d be wrong about that.
Crack? Fraud and theft? Big deal.
Deleting e-mails from your mom, to remind you about a family dinner on Sunday — now, that’s a real crime!
Bear with us, here. Up in Ottawa, as you may have heard, two Conservative senators have been accused of breaking every rule in the book and claimed expenses they weren’t owed. The prime minister has lost his chief of staff to the ongoing scandal, the ruling party is in turmoil, and the RCMP have launched an investigation into — one assumes — possible fraud, breach of trust and theft. But (as noted) who cares, really.
Down in Toronto, the mayor has been accused of smoking crack cocaine, his councillor brother has been named as a dealer of drugs, and people who are photographed with the mayor are getting shot. Both Rob and Doug Ford have denied the claims but neither the mayor, nor his brother, have sued the media organizations making the allegations. Hmmmm…
Call me crazy, and plenty do, but those allegations (to wit, stealing taxpayer dollars, doing drugs, dealing drugs, Your Honour) seem to me to be, you know, sort of serious. But Conservatives — panicked and desperate to change the subject — have conjured up a scandal of their own: A departed Liberal political staffer deleted e-mails before he left his job at Queen’s Park. Oh, and another one inquired about how to expunge e-mails, too.
The e-mail “scandal,” which is clearly bigger than Watergate and Adscam put together, has been given life by Ontario’s publicity-seeking John Gomery wannabe, “Information and Privacy Commissioner” Ann Cavoukian. Like Gomery, Cavoukian has issued a hysterical report about the affair, and even huffed that the Liberal government deserved to be defeated for it.
Unlike Gomery, Cavoukian didn’t even bother to contact some of the political staffers she has sought to smear in her inquisition. Not has she apparently given a moment’s thought to the notion that officials delete e-mails all the time, at all levels, in governments of all stripes. Nor, for that matter, did it apparently matter that the statute in question is the Ontario “Archives and Recordkeeping Act,” and not the “Criminal Code of Canada.”
Conservatives urgently needed a channel-changer, and Cavoukian — in need of a close-up, as commissioners and ombudspersons so often do — gave them one. The Ontario Provincial Police have therefore opened an investigation into whether it is appropriate for departing political staff to delete e-mails from their girlfriends about whether to see the new Star Trek movie, or the one with Vince Vaughan in it (um, Star Trek).
Now, it isn’t just the OPP, the Conservatives and kooky Cavoukian who deserve opprobrium, here. So too does the former Ontario Liberal premier, Dalton McGuinty, who rushed out a panicked press release on Friday to say (a) he didn’t know anything about deletion of e-mails and (b) to throw several former aides under the proverbial bus. (As a former McGuinty campaign worker, I say shame on him.)
But, again, what do I know? Clearly, deleting e-mails from mom is bad-ass bad. Crack and fraud? Yawn.
Oh, and one more thing: If you start prosecuting departing politicos for deleting e-mails, you’d better start building a lot more jails.
You’re gonna need ’em.
Below this post are options to share on Facebook, Twitter or as email.
Send it to someone as an email, then delete it.
Presto! You have just commited what is considered an actual criminal offence at Queen’s Park!
Congratulations! Now, go turn youself in to the OPP!
He wasn’t perfect – he was insufficiently attuned to the fact that Nazi imagery was unwanted, even in punk – but he changed the popular culture, and not many of us can say that. Story here and his masterwork below.
