Those busy Conservative Lawyers
The federal Conservative party has quietly settled a lawsuit with a disgruntled former candidate but now faces the possibility of two fresh legal challenges.
Lawyer Alan Riddell, who was stripped of his Tory candidacy in 2005, settled his libel suit against Prime Minister Stephen Harper and party president Don Plett out of court, the party said in a terse, one-line statement on the weekend.
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The Riddell case dates to the fall of 2005 when the Conservative party decided it wanted to replace its candidate in Ottawa South with Allan Cutler, a former bureaucrat who blew the whistle on the sponsorship scandal.
After repeatedly attempting to disqualify Riddell, who'd run for the Tories in the 2004 election, the party agreed to reimburse him $50,000 in expenses if he would step down voluntarily.
They subsequently refused to pay when the arrangement became public knowledge, and Harper flatly denied in public that any such deal between the party and Riddell had been made.
Riddell sued for libel, essentially arguing the prime minister had accused him of being a liar.
The party released a single-line statement on the weekend, dated Friday, saying they had "mutually settled all legal proceedings."
One down, and two more on the way for their dismissal of two other riding candidates, which I’ve already covered to some extent.
If the two former candidates do file suit, it would mark another legal chapter for Conservative party lawyers who have seldom lacked for work in the last two years.
It's an unlikely twist for a party whose 2006 election platform promised to "ensure that party nomination and leadership races are conducted in a fair, transparent and democratic manner" and "prevent party leaders from appointing candidates without the democratic consent of local electoral district associations."
A bitter court battle over the nomination process in Calgary West, the riding of Conservative MP Rob Anders, ground on for months and eventually compelled Anders to repeat the nomination process last spring.
Just last month, the party replaced the riding executive in a Nova Scotia riding after the existing members pledged their continuing support for Independent MP Bill Casey, who was expelled from the Conservative caucus for voting against a budget measure.
And they don’t even mention the work those Conservative lawyers must be doing to defend the party from their campaign spending scandal.
As far as it being an unlikely twist, if only. It has long been apparent that the Conservative party is to serve the interests of its leadership, not its constituents. From the very beginning Harper has worked to crush any dissenting opinions and restrict members’ ability to communicate any opinions outside of what he personally approves.
Slapping down local riding committees so he can put his own people in the running isn’t out of character.
