Joe Volpe To Address Latest Campaign Controversy
Posted September 24, 2006 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A published report claims the Volpe campaign team signed up dozens of members in Quebec without their knowledge or without paying the required $10 fee and two of those new Grit recruits were deceased.
According to Liberal Party rules, all members must pay their own membership and personally sign a membership form. It’s also illegal for a leadership campaign to pay membership fees under new political financing laws.
The former Paul Martin-era cabinet minister is scheduled to hold a press conference Monday morning in Ottawa and there’s speculation as to whether he’ll pull out of the race or defend himself against the allegations.
The report cited membership lists, which are supposed to be confidential. Leadership candidates had to sign a declaration promising not to give the information to outside sources. Because of the rules regarding the lists, Volpe insiders reportedly believe this controversy is a smear campaign coordinated by organizers for race front-runner Michael Ignatieff.
While Ignatieff and fellow candidate Stephane Dion have strong support in Quebec, Volpe managed to sign up 4,000 new members in the province – more than any other candidate – and recruited some 35,000 new members nationwide.
Volpe’s campaign for leadership of a party with a cloud of scandal still hanging over it from the sponsorship debacle has also experienced its fair share of controversy.
The candidate was forced to return $27,000 in donations from donors under the age of 18, including 11-year-old twins after it was revealed that he accepted $108,000 from 20 former and current executives at generic drug company Apotex Inc., their spouses and kids, who’d each donated the maximum amount of $5,400.
Volpe was accused of trying to skirt the party’s ban on corporate donations and there were calls for him to pull out of the race.
And Volpe’s national campaign director quit this summer because he didn’t agree with the candidate’s strong support of Israel during the conflict with Lebanon. The disagreement led to a dispute over the ownership of Volpe’s membership list in which police had to intervene.
