Are stop signs the next target for Charlottetown Liberal Shawn Murphy's campaign?

Folks may be forgiven for wondering.

The Guardian:

The executive director of the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island is apologizing after he was caught on camera removing political signs put in place by local Conservatives.

Patrick Ross, a Conservative campaign worker, photographed Mark O’Halloran removing the lawn signs less than five hours after they were put up.

Those lawn signs read: “Say no to the Dion tax!” The signs were strategically placed below Liberal billboards throughout the capital city. Photos provided to The Guardian show a close-up of the back seat of O’Halloran’s car, which was stacked to the roof with lawn signs, many of which had their stakes snapped in two.

When I first heard about this story earlier today, I thought perhaps that the deed had been perpetrated by an ill-informed, inexperienced and overenthusiastic Murphy volunteer. Far from it. Mark O'Halloran is not only executive director of the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island, but also past president of the Young Liberals of Prince Edward Island. According to the minutes of their annual general meeting on April 26, 2008, special guest Shawn Murphy, MP for Charlottetown "thanked Mark O’Halloran for all his work and congratulated him on his new position."

That's O'Halloran on the left, along with Brenda Hackett, president of the provincial Liberal party, Murphy, and Tim Cullen, new president of the Young Liberals of P.E.I. [Guardian photo]:

The Guardian:

Outgoing Young Liberals president Mark O’Halloran, who has been appointed executive director of the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island, said the youth are a powerful force within the party.

“The young Liberals truly have a strong voice within the party here . . . (they’re) voice does make a profound difference.”

Charlottetown MP Shawn Murphy agreed, saying the youth effort helped bring the provincial Liberals to victory during last year’s election.

“A lot of the credit goes to those in this room. You really put your whole heart and soul in that election.”

Shawn Murphy is likely now wishing that O'Halloran had put a little less heart and a bit more brains into that effort.

That O'Halloran, of all people, should be familiar with Elections Canada rules as to election advertising should be blindingly obvious. The section in question is short, sweet, and to the point:

Message must be authorized

320. A candidate or registered party, or a person acting on their behalf, who causes election advertising to be conducted shall mention in or on the message that its transmission was authorized by the official agent of the candidate or by the registered agent of the party, as the case may be. [emphasis added]

In fact, the recent issue over possible electoral improprieties regarding a last-minute MP mailer by Murphy's office should have made everyone in Murphy's camp intimately familiar with this little clause. So the Liberals' excuse in this case is pretty tough to swallow:

Mary Lynn Kane, a spokeswoman for Charlottetown Liberal Shawn Murphy, described it as a miscommunication and added the Conservatives are making a mountain out of a molehill.

“Nobody knew where they were from because there did not appear to be any authorized official agent. A call was made to Elections Canada and Elections Canada told them to take them down,” Kane said, in an interview.

“I haven’t seen it but I guess the ‘authorized by’ is minuscule.”

O’Halloran could not be reached for comment.

Kane said he would not be taking calls from the media but added that the executive director of the Liberal party did apologize to the Conservatives.

"Nobody knew where they came from"? "There did not appear to be any authorized official agent"? Elections Canada can authorize the Liberal Party to take them down? Can't Ms. Kane, who happens to be a lawyer like Shawn, do better than that?

There is no mention of size anywhere in Section 320 of the Elections Act, and as everyone knows from experience, mention of a candidate's official agent is, by convention, "miniscule" on most election advertising pieces. Here's an example of the sign in question (click on it for close-up):



The authorization is in the bottom right-hand corner, as better seen in this picture (click for enlargement):



Yep, it's tiny, but it's legible and in compliance with the law. That Mark O'Halloran, a university graduate, executive director of the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island, and I believe a gainful employee of a local accounting firm, should start yanking out the signs willy-nilly, breaking several in the process, without actually looking at them first, strains credulity. And Shawn Murphy's reaction?

Charlottetown Liberal Shawn Murphy said the signs should not have been taken down but he stopped short of apologizing for the actions of the executive director.

“If anyone was taking down signs that were put there by another party, then they should not have been and they certainly weren’t doing so with my authorization or blessing and it’s unfortunate,” said Murphy.

"Unfortunate." Yep, it's certainly unfortunate to be surrounded by such an impressive braintrust. It must certainly be comforting in this circumstance to have a handy scapegoat at hand, however thin and scraggly:

Dana Doiron, a spokesman for Elections Canada, admits an official from Elections Canada in Ottawa did tell the Liberals to take down the sign — something that should not have happened.

He said Elections Canada has apologized.

If an illegal sign is in place, a complaint needs to be launched with the Commissioner of Elections and it is the commissioner who decides if the sign needs to be removed — not Elections Canada.

“The error was in making a judgment remotely. It’s not our business.”[source]

UPDATE: CBC-TV-Prince Edward Island mentioned the story briefly on their 6pm newscast (available in sidebar here) and CTV's Mike Duffy announced that he will be covering it later this evening at 8pm Eastern.

UPDATE: Others blogging about this:

Right as Rain:

1. Will the Elections Canada staffer who mis-informed Mark O’Halloran be fired? This Elections Canada worker counseled a Liberal Party staffer to break the law. This is unacceptable. It could be incompetence or conspiracy, I lean more towards incompetence.
2. Will William H. Corbett, the Commissioner of Elections Canada resign for this mistake? If this was a staffer in a minister's office the opposition and media will be calling for the resignation of the minister.
   
3. Will the cost of the broken signs be reimbursed to Tom DeBlois?
4. Whom will reimburse the cost of the damaged signs? Elections Canada? Or Liberal Shawn Murphy have to reimburse? Someone else?
5. Will the cost of replacing these damaged signs count against the election spending limit of Conservative Tom DeBlois?

1. 
   

Stephen Taylor:

Conservative candidate Tom DeBlois posted signs throughout his riding advising constituents to “say no” to Dion’s carbon tax. These signs weren’t the standard blue with the standard Conservative logo but they were authorized by the official agent for Tom DeBlois.

Liberals, infuriated by opposition to their leader’s carbon tax, or perhaps just simply frustrated the plan isn’t going over as well as Al Gore’s private jet on the way to another Inconvenient presentation, drove throughout the riding and tore down the signs.

If this sounds like the standard campaign dirty tricks, read on. There’s an interesting twist. Turns out that Elections Canada actually authorized the take-down of the signs. Even if the signs were illegal, why did Elections Canada outsource it’s muscle to the Liberal Party? With pre-election suggestions by the Conservatives of Elections Canada working hand-in-glove with the Liberal Party, one would presume Elections Canada would be more careful and do better to try and dispel this allegation. The problem for the Liberals, and for Elections Canada in particular, the signs are completely legal and the subjective arbiter of elections fails to secure the democratic process from abuse once again and in this particular case they enabled it.

Christian Conservative:

We're not talking some low level volunteer folks... we're talking about Mark O’Halloran, the Executive Director of the Liberal Party of Prince Edward Island.

Clear Conservative Thought:

Well I'm sorry Elections Canada, but this is apology is just not acceptable. This is but another in a long line of assaults on the Conservative Party's democratic rights. Elections Canada should not be telling party officials to remove signs, they should be investigating these things, and only then should they be instructing anyone to remove them.

It is utterly disgusting that Elections Canada failed to perform their duties and uphold the principles of a fair and equitable election in this region.

SATURDAY UPDATE: Wayne Thibodeau's second article on the story at The Guardian.