KING-VAUGHAN: 'Cease-and-desist' letter latest twist

Yorkregion.com
Oct. 7, 2015
By Tim Kelly

The King-Vaughan federal NDP candidate has publicly slammed her Conservative opponent for sending her a cease and desist letter.

Natalie Rizzo said Conservative candidate Konstantin Toubis waited until the end of a two-hour all-candidates election briefing at the riding returning office in King City last Friday to slap her with the cease-and-desist letter for what Toubis calls “inappropriate stuff about my family, my wife and myself ... on her wall.”

Rizzo, speaking at an all-candidates meeting hosted by Concerned Citizens of King Township (CCKT) on Tuesday night, said “it was completely inappropriate” for Toubis to give her the letter in the riding returning office.

“The content of the letter said there were tweets sent to me he was not pleased with. As you know, I cannot cease and desist what someone else is tweeting about him,” Rizzo said.

Toubis, who declined to attend the CCKT debate, citing a conflict  (he also skipped last week’s Rogers TV all-candidates meeting), said in a phone interview Wednesday morning he felt entirely justified in serving Rizzo with the letter.

“It doesn’t matter if she tweeted or retweeted, it was pictures and she didn’t delete them. It was on her Facebook and Twitter account. I never said that she Tweeted but it was really offensive pictures of me and my wife and nobody can touch my family no matter what. And if someone will touch them, there is a legal instrument to explain to people that they’re wrong,” he said.

Asked if he believed it was appropriate to deliver the cease-and-desist letter to Rizzo at the riding’s Returning Office, Toubis said: “I did that in an appropriate time and in an appropriate place.”

Green Party candidate Ann Raney said she witnessed Toubis handing the letter to Rizzo and was upset at what happened.

“I heard him (Toubis) say, ‘If you were to say anything against his family or himself you would be sued’ and he said that looking at the rest of us,” she said.

Rizzo, a youthful candidate who is still a university student at U of T, said she’s put off by the whole situation.

“I will say my other two colleagues have been pleasant and amicable. I cannot say the same for my Conservative colleague.”