Tory candidate dumped after social media comments on race, drug use
A Conservative candidate in Newfoundland is no longer running for the party after his social media musings on drug use, abortion and race came to light.
Thestar.com
Sept. 15, 2015
By Bruce Campion-Smith
A Conservative candidate in Newfoundland is no longer running for the party after his social media musings on drug use, abortion and race came to light.
Blair Dale was to be the party’s flag-bearer in the riding of Bonavista-Burin-Trinity until his alleged comments were revealed by blogger Robert Jago.
Jago unearthed comments he says appear to have been made by Dale on Google+ and the dating site OkCupid.
Stephen Lecce, a Conservative spokesperson, said Tuesday that, “Mr. Dale is no longer a candidate” but offered no explanations for why he had left the race. The Star was unable to reach Dale for comment on Tuesday.
However, news that Dale was no longer contesting the riding came just hours after Jago revealed his alleged on-line postings. They included comments about race on the big screen, according to Jago’s blog.
“If you want to see more of your race, stop supporting things that aren’t about it,” Dale wrote, according to one comment on his Google+ page highlighted by Jago.
Dale also said he would like evolution and creationism taught together in school, saying “students should hear both sides.”
He said he could date someone who does drugs, “but only soft stuff like marijuana,” Jago reported on his blog.
On abortion, Dale said it “depends on the case, not just for being irresponsible, but in cases like rape, yes.”
Dale is a former office assistant to LaVar Payne, an Alberta MP who retired from politics at the end of the last parliamentary session.
Jago is the same blogger who last week revealed the prank calls reportedly made by Tim Dutaud, the Conservative candidate for Toronto-Danforth, faking orgasms and mocking mentally disabled people. Dutaud was dumped by the Conservatives as well.
Meanwhile, an investigation has found that the brother-in-law of Conservative campaign manager Jenni Byrne broke conflict-of-interest rules when he left a post in a minister’s office and went to work for a lobbying firm he had had dealings with.
In a report released Tuesday, Mary Dawson, the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner, concluded that Daniel Kosick, a former policy adviser to former Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development Diane Finley had failed to observe a cooling off period.
Ethics rules require that public office holders wait at least a year before accepting a job with a firm they had “direct and significant” dealings with during their last year in government.
But Dawson found that in August 2013, Kosick left the minister’s office and just a month later joined Flagship Solutions Inc., a government relations and public relations company.
Dawson’s probe found that while he was a policy adviser, Kosick had a number of interactions with a lobbying consultant from Flagship.
“I concluded that that Mr. Kosick clearly had direct and significant official dealings with Flagship during his last year in office,” Dawson said.
By accepting the job offer, he contravened the conflict of interest act, Dawson wrote.
Kosick didn’t think there would be a conflict because he would be working for Flagship, and not the National Association of Career Colleges (NACC), which he had had dealings with during his time in the minister’s office, according to Dawson’s report.
Yet Kosick had been meeting with Serge Buy, a lobbying consultant with Flagship, who was doing work on behalf of the college association. When Buy offered him a job, Kosick should have understood that the connection between Flagship and the NACC would put him in a conflict, Dawson wrote.
Byrne has been in the news as questions swirl about troubles within the Conservative campaign. Kosick is married to Byrne’s sister Jerra, a family connection first highlighted Tuesday by the Ottawa Citizen.
