Pubdate: Wed, 24 Sep 2008 Source: Record, The (CN BC) Copyright: 2008 Lower Mainland Publishing Group Inc. Contact: http://www.royalcityrecord.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1654 Author: Keith Baldrey GAFFES ABOUND IN CAMPAIGNS If nothing else, the slumbering federal election campaign has proven that none of the parties has a monopoly on incompetent, insensitive or just plain dumb behaviour. It's hard to rank the parties in terms of which has made the worst mistakes, but the NDP's stunning loss of two candidates in the same number of days over the same issue - marijuana use - has to be placed near the top. Have the NDP strategists even heard of Google? Were they unable to do any background checks on the two candidates - Dana Larsen in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast and Kirk Tousaw in Vancouver-Quadra - that were sufficient enough to reveal the parts of their past that have now come back to haunt them? Larsen's prior involvement in a company selling seeds for illegal plants and Tousaw's appearance in online videos showing him smoking marijuana and advocating its use sealed their doom. It seems the NDP brass was well aware of both candidates' positions on the issue of marijuana use, yet didn't seem to realize the potential negative fallout of their history (perhaps it was party leader Jack Layton's own appearance on PotTv that clouded their thinking). One mistake is perhaps understandable, but two of this magnitude? Come on - the B.C. NDP campaign is responsible for running a measly 36 candidates, which is less than half the number that will run in the provincial campaign. The party can't keep a handle on 36 people? But let's not let the other parties off easy either. The Greens have also lost a candidate in B.C. - John Shavluk in Newton-North Delta - who was forced to resign on the eve of the election campaign for making anti-Semitic remarks in an online forum in 2006. Again, this was an example of past behaviour catching up with a candidate and again raises the question of why the Greens didn't do a better background check on him. The Liberals have also lost a candidate - Stephane Bedard in Quebec City - who mused aloud how the army should have used deadly force in the Oka standoff with the Mohawks in Quebec years ago. Out he went - but again, his original comments were made years ago. Is the Google search function just not working for political parties these days? The Conservative gaffes have been greater in number. They too have lost a candidate in Ontario, again for making stupid comments on his personal blog. The party's communications director was suspended after making a disparaging comment about a fallen Canadian soldier's father who was critical of Harper's plan to pull out of Afghanistan by 2011. The party had to pull an ad (the notorious "pooping Puffin") from its website that was deemed distasteful. The party's agriculture minister Gerry Ritz has been under fire for making jokes about the sliced meat scandal, and about how he hoped the Liberals' agriculture critic was one of the victims of the listeriosis outbreak in Prince Edward Island. For now, though, the polls suggest the majority of voters still aren't paying much attention to this campaign and therefore all those gaffes may be getting lots of coverage from the media but are not resonating with people - yet. But woe to any party that keeps making mistakes when the people they're trying to woo for support do wake up and start noticing things. That's when lost candidates and moronic statements can really hurt. - --- MAP posted-by: Keith Brilhart