There must be some misunderstanding

By Colby Cosh - Thursday, June 10, 2010 at 3:36 AM - 39 Comments

Pardon me for interrupting all the clamour about Liberal-NDP cooperation negotiations, but can I just point out that Warren Kinsella chose consciously to introduce testimony in the form of a sworn legal document here? We should probably take the hint and subject this document to unusually careful reading before we characterize it and riff on it as commentators.

Colleague Geddes refers to it as “an affidavit in which Kinsella says Alfred Apps, the Liberal party president, told him last month about ‘many conversations at a high level’ between Liberals and New Democrats on the possibility of their parties merging.” I beg Geddes’ pardon, but whatever Mr. Kinsella may say elsewhere, his affidavit does not mention any Liberal-New Democrat discussions per se. Apps is quoted as saying “There is a lot of interest in merger in the NDP” and that “There have been many discussions at a high level…involving the NDP saints [whom he described as Broadbent, Romanow].” Apps then goes on to describe the difficult conditions the NDP would have to meet in order for a hypothetical merger to happen: these include renouncing socialism (as opposed to the recent policy of keeping it chained up in the attic like Mrs. Rochester) and stripping the unions of their constitutional power over the New Democrats.

Here are some other things the Kinsella affidavit does not claim: that Apps was the one who brought up the whole merger/cooperation idea to Kinsella in the first place; that Apps was even the one who placed the call to Kinsella; that Apps ordered him to take notes on the conversation (though he reports that he took them); or that Apps thought merger or cooperation were good ideas overall (in Kinsella’s account Apps describes merger as a “profoundly democratic act”, but not necessarily a realistic or desirable one). Nothing factual in the affidavit actually appears to contradict Apps’s statement that he thinks “an ‘opposition coalition’ [is] a crazy idea”.

Apps has also said that “Everything in the affidavit that [Kinsella] describes as cornerstones of a [merger] ‘plan’ were, in fact, reasons my view as to reasons why a merger would and could never occur.” Based on the language of the affidavit as such, that could easily be the case. Especially since those “cornerstones” are, in fact, pretty good reasons such a merger could probably never occur!

Is it possible the whole thing is just the result of a simple disagreement over interpretations of a phone chat? I am not seeing any necessary basis at all for declaring either man a prevaricator. Surely a neutral observer ought to search for the most generous possible explanation for their dispute?

Warren Kinsella's chat with Alfred Apps

By John Geddes - Wednesday, June 9, 2010 at 5:33 PM - 57 Comments

CBC’s Evan Solomon has just reported about Warren Kinsella having sworn an affidavit in which Kinsella says Alfred Apps, the Liberal party president, told him last month about “many conversations at a high level” between Liberals and New Democrats on the possibility of their parties merging.

As it happens, I interviewed Apps on this general subject last week and last night exchanged emails with him after CBC reported that secret merger talks have taken place between the parties. My story on Apps’s views will be published in the issue of Maclean’s that comes out on Thursday.

But I thought the main thrust of what he told me about the nature of any conversations about a merger might be useful now to those following this story. “There has often been idle banter between Libs and NDP,” Apps said in an email, ” and between Libs and Progressive Conservatives, but I have no knowledge of any serious or genuine discussions.”

He added that he has never talked about the merger concept with Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff or his staff. Of course, Apps does not say he’s never heard the unite-the-left idea kicked around. “When approached on this question informally,” he said, “I have always rejected the idea.”

Exclusive: The Liberal plan to respond to the Harper ads

By Paul Wells - Friday, May 22, 2009 at 1:43 PM - 327 Comments

The Conservative advertising campaign against Michael Ignatieff has spurred the federal Liberals to sharply accelerate their fundraising activity so they can pay for a “focused response to the personal attacks” on the new leader, Maclean’s has learned.

The Liberals are rushing ahead with a major change to the party’s organization, which only two weeks ago they had planned for the autumn, so they can be ready for a much more robust summer of activity. Emergency meetings of the Liberals’ various governing bodies are underway, with more planned for next week. The goal: a $25 million annual war chest and a vastly expanded grassroots organization to pay for it. Continue…

The "Prince of Darkness" is back in the Liberal fold

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, April 10, 2009 at 12:08 PM - 0 Comments

Warren Kinsella fancies himself a bon vivant, a punk rocker and the so-called “Prince of Darkness” of Canadian politics. His political books are thick with tales of dirty tricks and nasty business in Ottawa’s corridors of power, and he is an admitted and most gleeful practitioner of both. His reputation and methods have brought him to the helm of Michael Ignatieff’s “war room,” where he will presumably ply his trade in the Liberal leader’s next election campaign.

Kinsella’s return to the Liberal fold–he went into quasi-exile from the Liberal Party during Prime Minister Paul Martin’s regime, and has an ongoing defamation lawsuit against Martin–has riled the Conservative government enough that party MPs have invoked Kinsella’s name 36 times in the House of Commons in an apparent attempt to discredit Ignatieff. “Kinsella’s thuggish antics have been approved and condoned by the Liberal Party,” said Conservative MP Lois Brown in one typical screed. The attention has at once delighted and inflamed Kinsella, who catalogued the outbursts on his blog. “[T]hey do all that they know how to do: attack, vilify, smear,” he wrote earlier this month. Coming from Kinsella, who once wrote that “negative politics work,” this might well be a compliment. “The political folks I work with know who I am and what I do,” Kinsella wrote in an email to Maclean’s. Apparently so; publicly, Liberals responded with a collective shrug–for the party, Kinsella’s campaign muscle is seemingly worth the dust he kicks up. “Warren’s a great guy, I love him,” said senior Ignatieff advisor Alfred Apps. Continue…

Sorry, have we met?

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, February 27, 2009 at 1:46 PM - 13 Comments

Photo by Alan Hustak

Last week’s Maclean’s story detailing strategist and organizer Beryl Wajsman’s return to the Liberal Party of Canada has erupted in Ottawa. Wajsman, whose name appeared on a list of ten prominent Liberals “banned” from the party following the sponsorship scandal in 2005, has since returned to the Liberal fold, primarily as an organizer for Michael Ignatieff advisor Alfred Apps.

Conservative Public Works Minister Christian Paradis brought up Wajsman’s return in the House of Commons yesterday, and followed up with a press release saying the Liberal Party “has clearly not learned its lesson from the Sponsorship Scandal.”

Continue…