Craig Taylor responds to what appears to be partisan support of Richard Mahoney's campaign website:

Dear John,

I received your email this morning and read it with growing alarm. I too would have great concern if what you have stated was correct. I would like to explain the situation.

I am a friend of Richard Mahoney, and have been for over a decade. In the fall of 2001 he wanted to have his own Internet domain name so he could have personalized e-mail. A friend of mine was registering domain names for himself and I asked him to register Richardmahoney.ca. He did and being unaware of my personal e-mail address entered my governmental e-mail address. I was unaware of this and did not check the Internic web site, I just sent the documentation to Richard. This was well before he chose to run for office.

In November of this year, Richard's campaign office called me and told me that when they renewed the domain name they noticed that I was listed as the administrative contact - I checked the Internic site and discovered, much to my horror that not only was I listed as the contact person for the site it included my departmental e-mail address. I immediately changed it to my home e-mail address and searched my records from 2001 found the id and password for Internic and requested that Richard's campaign replace my name with that of the appropriate individual, which they did.

Unknown to them, and to me, updating the Internic site does not update the official CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority) site where it continued to list me as the administrative contact. When this was pointed out to me I immediately corrected that error and realising the potential for misunderstanding and embarrassment contacted the appropriate officials at the department, explaining to them, as I am doing with you, that I have never actually administered this site nor any web site associated with this domain. It was turned over to Richard in 2001 and aside from recently amending the contact information have had no dealings with the site.

As you know from our days working for the CTC I have being a career civil servant for many years and I am proud to be a member of the Canadian Public Service and I treasure its non-partisanship, which was why I was so concerned when my departmental e-mail was referenced in concert with a political web site.

I have worked loyally for all the parties that have formed governments over the last twenty odd years and will do so in the future. It would be a sad day for all Canadians if the trust in the objectiveness of our public service was undermined, which is why I am answering your question at such length.

I hope that this clears up the situation, though I am available to discuss it further if you wish. Please feel free to forward my response to whomever might be interested, though I would hope that you quote it in its entirety.

Sincerely

Craig Taylor

I think we might have to give Taylor the benefit of the doubt, unless someone else can refute his story. Internet archives show richardmahoney.ca became an active site only by mid-2004, in time for the election. It is quite possible that in all the time before that, the domain name was being used to support a personalized email address.

It is quite possible that Taylor's friend entered the email address and fax number without Taylor's permission. And that Taylor never noticed. Of course, it would also require that not a single fax or email was sent to the administrator of the site (Taylor) in the five years until the 2006 election.

And that includes the 2004 election, when the website was born at this address. I would have thought that would have generated some emails, but apparently it did not.

Is all this believable? Hard to say.

My argument was never with Craig Taylor, as such, but with Richard Mahoney. His pronouncements on Stephen Harper's concern about the impartiality of a civil service grown accustomed to over a decade of Liberal rule were shrill, and quickly undermined by his own cozy relationship with civil servants.

Some elements of Taylor's explanation are not easily taken at face value, but short of specific evidence of Taylor's further involvement in Mahoney's political activities, evidence that I haven't found online, we'll have to take Taylor at his word when he says he will work diligently for any duly elected government.

When all's said and done, that's what I wanted to hear, so I probably shouldn't complain.

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