Anyone with an understanding of the political situation at Queen’s Park must know that the chances of anyone being convicted over the possible bribery in the Sudbury bye-election is unlikely. It is obvious that the Ontario Provincial Police are wary of charging the real perpetrator. And the people charged are merely dupes. Is there a point to all this?
The opposition parties at the legislature are hardly helping. They keep demanding the head of Ontario Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault. Hang him for doing a poor job in cabinet if you wish but it is unlikely he would have been involved in the purported bribery.
The only person who should take responsibility for this breach of the elections act is Premier Kathleen Wynne. And the only person who had the authority to ask Patricia Sorbara to commit this breach was Premier Kathleen Wynne.
Sorbara was only deputy chief of staff to Wynne but she had been involved in politics for far too long to be told to do it by anyone else. And frankly, you would think that someone who has been around as long as Sorbara would know to pass the chore further down the food chain.
It is always too easy to find a dupe in politics to do the dirty work. They rarely realize that they got the chore because it is easy to disavow them.
But Kathleen Wynne can hardly disavow Sorbara. Not after making the long-time hanger-on at Queen’s Park head of her re-election campaign. That is a position of considerable trust.
There are a lot of different names for Sorbara’s campaign position but ‘stupid’ should not be one of them. You hear a lot about people being ‘thrown under the bus’ in election campaigns but you hardly do that to the director of your re-election campaign.
What is obvious to the provincial police and to everyone who has heard the tapes of the conversations recorded by former candidate Andrew Olivier that the premier was behind the calls. The calls between Sorbara and Andrew Olivier and Gerry Lougheed and Andrew Olivier made it clear that Lougheed and Sorbara were speaking on behalf of Premier Kathleen Wynne. They would have been idiots to have said what they did if they did not have the Premier’s assurances.
Probably the first thing that will happen in court is the charge that Sorbara bribed NDP MP Glenn Thibeault to switch to provincial politics and the Liberals will be thrown out. There does not seem to be anyone who bothered to record that.
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Copyright 2016 © Peter Lowry
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