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A former employee of Ontario's 407 private freeway quit suddenly Wednesday as a Progressive Conservative candidate in next month's election, barely an hour after the highway confirmed that information on 60,000 customers had been leaked through an "internal theft."
Simmer Sandhu, the candidate for Brampton East, said in an online statement that he had recently been made aware of anonymous allegations against him "pertaining to both my work life and my nomination campaign."
"These allegations are totally baseless. I absolutely deny them," he said on both Twitter and Facebook. "I will vigorously defend myself and reputation and I am confident I will be cleared."
An opinion piece explains the anonymous allegations:
[...] it is alleged that someone stole 60,000 names, addresses and phone numbers from the privately-owned Highway 407 ETR's internal systems and distributed or sold the data to a couple of dozen candidates in GTA nomination races. Those campaigns then sold fake party memberships under the stolen names, mocked up identification that met the party's requirements (which do not include photo ID), and paid international students $200 a pop to vote under these fraudulent identities.
Wikipedia has an article about the Brampton East riding.
(Score: 4, Informative) by aclarke on Tuesday May 22 2018, @06:47PM (7 children)
Ah yes, the Ontario Conservatives. In my riding (Kitchener) we have this chain of events:
Regardless of how this may look, this definitely certainly had nothing to do with Mike Harris Sr. demanding a favour from Doug Ford for his son Mike Harris Jr. after helping Ford win the leadership campaign. Definitely not.
Ontario's probably going to have a new Conservative premier, and the Liberals probably deserve to lose after Kathleen Wynn's performance (Ontario's great economy notwithstanding) but wow the Ontario Conservatives generally seem like a bunch of bungling idiots. I'm not a Green Party member and I'll vote for the candidate and party with the best platform, but in every election in the past decade that's been the Green Party for me.
Ref: https://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2018/05/02/what-really-happened-to-michael-harris.html [thestar.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 22 2018, @08:05PM (5 children)
I can't believe we're going to have four more years of "It's not my fault". "It was all Brown". "The McWynties screwed it all up". "No this [insert scandal here] didn't happen"
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday May 23 2018, @12:44AM (2 children)
The NDP are seriously climbing and it seems to be that what was the PC's election to lose, they ARE losing big time (will it be enough? even a minority PC gov would be better than a majority).
An NDP gov would be ...... better? Not sure what to say about that, but maybe it wouldn't be worse, lol.
The latest poll has the greens losing a bit of support, probably from people wanting to support the NDP so there is no Liberal or PC gov: living in interesting times.
I enjoy the tension of elections, even if i don't always like the outcome (Trump winning was a BIG shock, lol. Would have loved to see a Trump-Sanders election).
I'm guessing i'll want to see an NDP gov over a PC gov, but maybe a minority gov would be good for now....
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by dry on Wednesday May 23 2018, @06:23AM (1 child)
Well here in BC we ended up with a minority NDP government supported by the Greens. There not doing too bad, budget is still balanced, economy is good and they at least partially remember that the NDP is supposed to be about labour as much as anything.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Wednesday May 23 2018, @10:12AM
Here's hoping for that in Ontario: last time we had an NDP gov, Bob Rae blew it and got chucked.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @05:18PM (1 child)
Today's news adds on to my earlier post about Doug's sketchy behaviour. Incidentally the timelines match up with the November membership breach: http://nationalpost.com/news/politics/doug-ford-accused-of-buying-memberships-to-help-preferred-candidate-win-tory-nomination [nationalpost.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 24 2018, @05:35PM
oops, wrong year. It was November 2016, not 2017.
less sketchy than it would have been in November 2017.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Gaaark on Wednesday May 23 2018, @12:36AM
"I'm not a Green Party member and I'll vote for the candidate and party with the best platform, but in every election in the past decade that's been the Green Party for me."
That's basically why i am turning Green: the status quo is just not good enough for the future (and the present).
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---