Fact Is Dion Campaign Broke The Rules

I blogged earlier of three campaigns that provided the Strategic Council Poll with confedential membership lists; appearently, quite disturbingly no one is shocked or dismayed. Maybe because everyone likes Dion, Dryden, and Brison, I for one do. But I'm not blaming the candidates, unless they knew. Odds are however it was their campaign managers who lacked the judgement necessary or who were underhanded and purposly and knowingly broke the rules.

For those of you who do not know the situation, in the strategic poll Dion and Dryden got supremly higher numbers then what they had been getting. It turns out, here that they supplied the poll with their membership lists. So wonder of wonders, their numbers go up, looking way better then before.

For more reading on the shadowy actions of Dion in him breaking the rules you can go here

Scott Brison is also accused of this, but as Personally Penny pointed out, his numbers should have been alot higher. So I personally agree with Penny.

Now I've already had the commentors trying to downplay this, which is just Orwellian to me. How can you deny something is black? No matter what they say I'll always see four fingers, I'll always see that the Liberal Party RIGHT NOW is investigating those campaigns. That's a fact! You can't spin that.

So far, the party is still investigating. Party national director Steve MacKinnon said, “Needless to say, using our membership lists for anything other than the intended purpose . . . troubles us. Membership lists are the property of the Liberal party and they are not to be disseminated to anybody on whim.” (glad to see that it’s about the party’s property rights, not members’ privacy interests - ed.)

Dion’s campaign director, Mark Marissen, claims “his camp received legal advice that it was within the bounds of the agreement to give the membership lists to the Globe strictly for the purpose of conducting a poll”, pointing to terms of the confidentiality agreement that permit the lists to be used by “an outside source” if the source signs a confidentiality agreement.

Some commentors have noted what's the harm? Me qualm, and it may be just a little reflex of mine, is when someone breaks the rules they get punished, especially when they break the rules, agreed upon by the party for their own advantage. Mark Marissen even admits they did it, currently he's saying they thought it was by the bbok, but this is just one more incident highlighting Mark's questionable methods.

Another example of hopefully just Mark's "accidents" and not Dion's was that during the last leadership convention, Jean Chretien requested that leadership camps in his riding allow an "undeclared" slate win so as not to politicize his role in the convention. At the convention his delegates would be fair game. Jean was granted this request.

After this precedent, Paul Martin made the same request to all 10 leadership camps, and after much consideration, 9 agreed. One refused. The refusal came within days of the Form 6 submission deadline, and came from Stephane Dion, despite the fact the request was conveyed to Dion via two Martin-ites turned CanaDions: Tim Murphy and Mark Marrissen. The refusal from Stephane was in very poor taste. Perhaps it's because he has no ground organization and required all the delegates he could get?