CBC’s Kate McKenna, who broke a story about Liberal operatives planting Trump-style buttons at a conservative conference last week, is covering Carney on the campaign trail this week.
She asked Carney how much the incident undermines trust in the Liberals — given the “anti-democratic” connotations of one of the pins, which bore the slogan “stop the steal,” a reference to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results — and what he’s done in response to the revelations.
“This is totally unacceptable, to be absolutely clear … I was unaware of this behaviour, but on behalf of my campaign I apologize for it unreservedly,” he said.
Asked later whether the Liberals have fired the staffers involved, Carney said they’ve been “reassigned” within the campaign.
“This behaviour or anything approximating it in that spirit is unacceptable, cannot happen, cannot happen again,” he said.
For some added context, this has been going on for years from all parties. Maybe this year was not the most amicable environment to do this in, and maybe these particular slogans were in bad taste, but I don’t think this is as egregious as everyone is saying.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/political-party-convention-gimmicks-1.2530848
If there’s one thing for which the cons can be relied upon, it’s performative moral outrage when the Liberals get caught using the same dirty tricks as them.
Sure, I just don’t find “everybody does it” to be a particularly compelling argument. Wrong is wrong.
Then we should be tracking down and firing everyone involved from all parties? Not disagreeing with the approach necessarily, but I assume you’d want it to be even handed.
I’m glad he owned it honestly, it’s more responsibility than I expected to see him take.
Yup.
Yes.
Eh. He said he had no idea it happened. And then “reassigned” the guilty parties. After the thing with the ex-cop in Toronto, it looks like Carney needs to improve his handling of personnel issues.
Being common doesn’t make it okay.