ryan sparrow

Adam Carroll, the member of the Liberal research team who resigned after admitting responsibility for Vikileaks, has been hired by the Liberal party. Vic Toews is unimpressed.

From the Inkless emailbox, this missive from Ryan Sparrow at the Conservative war room:

Ministerial aide Ryan Sparrow helpfully suggests a new slogan for the next Conservative re-election campaign.

The Canadian Association of Former Parliamentarians held a dinner in the Fairmont Château Laurier ballroom. Below, former Reform MP Deb Grey.

 

The Hill Times celebrated its 20th anniversary at the Library and Archives Canada on Wellington Street in Ottawa. NDP MP Niki Ashton addresses the crowd below.

Jim Flaherty, November 27. We cannot ask Canadians to tighten their belts during tougher times without looking in the mirror. Canadians have a right to look to government as an example. We have a responsibility to show restraint and respect for their money. Canadians’ tax dollars are precious. They must not be spent frivolously or without regard to where they came from. Canadians pay taxes so governments can provide essential services. They trust the people they elect to serve society with that money, not serve themselves …  Canadians pay their own bills and for some Canadians that is getting harder to do. Political parties should pay their own bills, too, and not with excessive tax dollars. Even during the best of economic times, parties should count primarily on the financial support of their own members and their own donors. Today our government is eliminating the $1.75 per vote taxpayer subsidy for politicians and their parties effective April 1, 2009. There will be no free ride for political parties. There never was. The freight was being paid by the taxpayers. This is the last stop on the route. There will be no free ride for anyone else in government either.

Doug Finley wants to know who might’ve whispered sometthing to the Telegraph-Journal.

As most of you are likely already aware, having either read it on the Globe’s boffo Bureau Blog or in the midst of ITQ’s liveblogging of the O’Brien trial, the Conservative Party of Canada has lost its chief spokesperson and reigning champion 500 metre hotel backstair sprinter. Yes, the rumours were true: the one and only Ryan Sparrow has started a new gig as communications director for HRDC minister — and blue ribbon panelist — Diane Finley. ITQ wishes him the best of luck in his new gig — yes, of course she’s serious; don’t give her that look — and looks forward to telling him so in person when she shows up to liveblog the first public meeting on employment insurance reform. It’ll be just like Camp In and Out, but with (presumably) less hostile witnesses!

Ryan Sparrow explains the Conservative attack ads.

Susan Delacourt links to yesterday’s clarification and receives a similarly worded letter of outrage. Citing her father’s birth in Glasgow, she has declined to clarify her views on whether time spent outside this country can be used to judge one’s commitment to it.

I’ve updated my original post to add the latest reports on the alleged smear campaign against Bill Casey, the most detailed and interesting of which, not surprisingly. comes from Casey’s local paper, the Halifax Chronicle Herald. Along with considerable background information on how the allegations against Casey were floated to at least two journalists during the last election, it also includes multiple on-the-record denials from various national party officials of any involvement by the federal party in filing the complaint with the RCMP.

Fear not, intrepid ITQ readers who are sticking it out through the turbulent – but temporary – format tweaking that is currently underway: this post will be updated just as soon as I’ve had time to think of some smart and/or witty things to say about the policy resolutions that are up for debate at next week’s convention in Winnipeg. Which, incidentally, still have yet to be officially released, as far as I know, but are slowly but surely leaking out, despite the best efforts of the Conservative Party to keep the package under wraps until the very last possible moment. (For ITQ’s money, that likely almost nothing to do with the content, which is pretty tame by like, oldschool Reform standards, but is just another example of the control freakiness of the national office.)