Last Friday, leadership hopeful Ruby Dhalla found out, live, on-air, from CBC Power and Politics’ David Cochrane, that the Liberal Party had disqualified her from the race for “extremely serious” violations. Dhalla called these allegations “false and fabricated” suggesting that they were levelled against her in order to “complete Mark Carney’s coronation.” One thing’s for sure, her disqualification happened in the eleventh hour — the story broke just before 5 p.m. EST on Friday, with the two Liberal leadership debates taking place Monday and Tuesday in Montreal.
This left no time for Dhalla to launch an investigation into the allegations or make an appeal that could be responded to before the debates. Even more curious, when interviewed by CBC about Dhalla’s disqualification, the Liberal party’s media relations and crisis consultant, Greg MacEachern didn’t seem to have anything “extremely serious” to point to.
What were these specific allegations? They appear to fall into two categories. CBC reported that Dhalla had been accused by the Liberal Party of violating the Elections Act and “certain other election finance matters, non-disclosure of material facts and inaccurate financial reporting.”
These allegations included “failing to disclose the involvement of a non-Canadian citizen in her campaign” and “alleged donation irregularities.” The identity of the non-Canadian citizen alleged to be involved in her campaign has not been revealed. When asked by Cochrane whether there was an extremely wealthy non-Canadian citizen supporting her campaign, Dhalla replied, “No there is not.”
What are donation irregularities? According to CBC, twelve names on the list of donors to Dhalla’s campaign donated the maximum amount permissible by law, allegedly, three pairs shared the same postal code. Dhalla’s campaign spokesperson Jacy Lafontaine, explained to CBC that “six couples donated using the same credit card” and the required attestation forms were not provided at the time.
The Liberals told CBC on Thursday, “When multiple maximum donations are processed on the same credit card, the party reaches out to those donors directly to confirm that these donations were made on the credit card issued from a joint bank account held in the names of both co-donors.” This is not an excuse, but might this be explained by the fact that someone is running their first campaign?
This logic seems strange and convenient. How is someone on a ballot responsible for the contributions made by other Canadians? Would Carney, Karina Gould, or Chrystia Freeland be kicked out of the race if random donors over-contributed from the same postal code? It seems unlikely.
Either way, in regards to this particular charge, the response seems extreme for the candidate.
Speaking to CBC, Liberal party media relations consultant Greg MacEachern seemed to point to other reasons for Dhalla’s disqualification, both emotional and political.
When asked by David Cochrane on Power and Politics what he made of Dhalla being the second candidate disqualified from the race, MacEachern responded, “Strangely, I feel a bit relieved.”
It gets better. He goes on to explain why, and it has nothing to do with the accusations levelled against Dhalla by the party.
“Some of my friends … talking about the leadership, we found a lot of Ruby Dhalla’s social media postings puzzling to say the least. She was very anti-WEF (World Economic Forum) which is based on a conspiracy theory, and you often hear it more on the conservative or the right side.”
MacEachern might be surprised to discover that the Switzerland-based World Economic Forum does, indeed, exist and is not a conspiracy. It’s also not strange for Canadians to be concerned about a think tank in the alps possibly guiding the direction of Canada’s economy.
MacEachern continued, “She was pretty vicious in their attacks on Prime Minister Trudeau, on Mark Carney.” So, no attacks on former leaders or other leadership candidates, even if warranted. Got it. What kind of leadership race discourse is acceptable to the Liberals?
Then MacEachern said the quiet part out loud.
He accused Dhalla of not being serious about her race and of being too popular: “In any leadership race, there are some people that enter it and their intention is for attention…. There’s nothing wrong with being an influencer. Do I want one as my prime minister? Probably not.” So, Dhalla was getting too much attention then?
He chooses then to bring up past allegations that were never proven about illegally employing and mistreating care givers she had hired to take care of her mother. “You know, I worked on the Hill when Ruby Dhalla was an MP, and there were some problematic issues then, a very well-known MacLean’s story at the time. Not much had been heard from her.” If this were, in fact, the reason why Dhalla was disqualified, why was she allowed to enter this race at all? Had she only recently become a threat to the insiders running?
In MacEachern’s opinion, Dhalla simply wasn’t “helpful” to the party: “And when I scroll through her social media, again there’s the things that I just talked about, that, you know, did not seem helpful, in terms of, you know, where the Liberal Party is right now, after three terms trying to seek a fourth term.”
According to MacEachern, Dhalla also hadn’t been posting about politics enough in the last two years.
You’d think he’d finally get to some of these “extremely serious” accusations about Dhalla. This is this Liberal consultant’s chance, after all, to prove this disqualification was valid and that Canadians have no cause for concern. The closest he comes to that is the following statement, “I’m glad that the process has seemed to be rigorous and vigorous …. my fear was, quite honestly, David, that things would come out after the fact.”
Things have certainly come out, but there hasn’t been time to ascertain whether they are true or worthy of Dhalla’s expulsion.
Chandra Arya was also allowed to enter the race and was then ousted. MacEachern’s explanation for Chandra’s ousting at the time — he was not a “serious candidate.” Yes, Chandra did not believe he needed to speak French, wanted small government and was anti-monarchist, among other things. But he was also already a sitting MP who revealled these beliefs as early as Jan. 9, but was not disqualified until Jan. 26, after he became an “influencer.”
Here’s the rub. Parties seem to be able to do whatever they want to oust a candidate they don’t like. This isn’t a problem particular to the Liberals. Dhalla’s ejection echos the ousting of Patrick Brown by the Conservative Leadership Election Organizing Committee (LEOC) in July of 2022.
Brown’s situation pales in comparison to Dhalla’s however. The Liberals have prorogued Parliament to run a leadership race so they could be better equipped to win an upcoming election which is likely to happen sooner rather than later. That choice to prorogue is being challenged in court as self-serving. Now, the only two outsider candidates who entered that race have been disqualified, Dhalla and Arya, both, seemingly, after they became popular on social media. This leaves only old-stock Trudeau Liberals on the ballot. In other words, friendlies. As a result, don’t expect much in the debates this week. That would be informative, but it wouldn’t be nice.
National Post
X: @TLNewmanMTL