Failed Conservative candidate a political problem for Tories

News item:

OTTAWA — The Conservative party has been ordered to pay up to $50,000 to a former candidate who agreed to step aside for a star recruit in the last election.
A judge has ruled that the party had no right to renege on agreement struck with Alan Riddell, who stepped aside as the candidate in Ottawa South so that Allan Cutler, the bureaucrat who blew the whistle on the sponsorship scandal, could carry the party banner in the riding . . .

“Agreement struck with Alan Riddell”? What agreement struck with Alan Riddell? Why I remember clear as if it was yesterday standing in a scrum with Stephen Harper on Dec. 4, 2005 — in the middle of the election campaign Harper would eventually win — asking him if the party had agreed to pay Riddell off as part of a backroom deal — a confidential agreement — to clear the way for Riddell.
“In fact there is no agreement and he hasn't been paid anything,” Harper told reporters on Dec. 4, 2005.
“The party does not have an agreement to pay Mr. Riddell these expenses, and Mr. Riddell has not been paid anything to date, ,” Harper told us said when asked again on the same day.
But a judge of the Ontario Superior Court of Justice disagrees. In a ruling he issued today — Riddell had sued the party to enforce the agreement denied by Harper — Mr. Justice Denis Power writes: “There is now no dispute between the parties concerning the fact that an agreement between Mr. Riddell and the CPC [Conservative Party of Canada] was concluded, [and] that the agreement is dated November 25, 2005 …”
Among those who negotiated directly with Riddell or his representatives in late 2005 were Ian Brodie, who was then and is now Harper's Chief of Staff; Mike Donison, then and now the executive director of the Conservative Party; and Don Plett, who was, then and now, the president of party. Brodie and Donison had, like Harper, rejected the idea that there was any backroom deal with Riddell when asked about this in late 2005.
And yet, if you read through the judge's finding [caution: it's a 13 MB PDF], you will find e-mails and testimony that clearly show how concerned Donison and others were that any whiff of this deal not be made public.
Harper was not available to answer questions today about this. Donison, reached by phone late this afternoon, referred questions to the terse two-line statement he issued today: “This is part of ongoing court proceedings surrounding various disputes between Mr. Riddell and the Conservative Party. The Party continues to be willing to attempt to resolve these issues if at all possible.” That statement, incidentally, is not anywere I can find on the press release section of the party's Web site as of 10 pm Ottawa time.
Riddell — who Donison refers to as “an idiot”, in an e-mail cited by the judge in his ruling – is not yet done with the Tories. He is suing Plett and Harper in separate actions, alleging that both men defamed him in their public comments and actions in the early part of the last election campaign.
And if you do download the ruling and leaf through it, you may run into names that you don't see everyday — like Ray Novak or Jenni Byrne. If you find such a name, trying running it through GEDS, the online government employee directory. The odds are you'll find that person working in the Prime MInister's Office.
Oh — and Allan Cutler — the candidate who represented a new way of doing politics for the Conservatives — was thumped by David McGuinty.