I certainly agree that it's very questionable to have an explicitly regional party in the federal debates, but for clarity's sake, the criteria are 2/3 of the following:
having at least one sitting MP who's been elected as a member of that party
having at least four per cent national support in opinion polls
running candidates in at least 90 per cent of all ridings
After pulling the candidates, the Green Party only meets one of these criteria (the first).
Yeah, from what I've gathered from previous articles on the topic, CSIS does not have boots-on-the-ground spies, foreign assets, or the infrastructure to support them.
Then we should be tracking down and firing everyone involved from all parties?
Yup.
In this case, I think there might be a case to be made.
"The prosecutor would be, I think, concerned … if the investigation was still going on behind the scenes, without them being looped in, while they're trying to prosecute a case," said Michael Arntfield, a criminologist and professor at Western University who worked for 16 years as a detective with the London Police Service in Ontario.
"If they say they can't interview him, that to me sounds like they've taken direction either from the Crown or from superior officers to not potentially interfere with the prosecution."
Sure, I just don't find "everybody does it" to be a particularly compelling argument. Wrong is wrong.
Absolutely. It's beyond me why someone would be against a hearing taking place, considering a "no" would be practically guaranteed in cases like these.
Carney said they’ve been “reassigned” within the campaign.
Not nearly enough.
Is it safe to say that casual use of the notwithstanding clause has been normalized to the point that there are no real consequences to invoking it any more?
CBC is reporting this as fact, not an allegation - it's safe to assume that they know exactly who these campaign workers are.
There are also decent reasons not to name them just yet - if they're low-level staffers, it's worth trying to get a comment from the Party first, and/or try to determine how far up the ladder this goes. No sense in scapegoating the grunts until the higher-ups are ID'd.
On Friday night, in two Ottawa bars, campaign workers shared how the party was behind this move — how two Liberal Party staffers attended the conference intended for conservatives and placed these buttons in areas where attendees would find them.
One of those conversations was in the immediate earshot of this journalist. A Conservative source overheard the other conversation.
Great, it just became easier to dismiss legitimate criticism of the Conservatives as a false-flag operation.
Brilliant move.
Certainly, and I've already expressed how I feel about that. But I get it - they're able to leverage the electoral system to their advantage, and have in fact been the Official Opposition at times.