Angry in the Great White North

Irregularities in memberships have been alleged against Liberal leadership candidate Michael Ignatieff, just as Joe Volpe prepares to make a statement about allegations that his membership list has been padded with unaware and even dead members:

Mud is starting to fly fast and furiously in the Liberal leadership race with allegations of membership irregularities spreading from Joe Volpe to presumed front-runner Michael Ignatieff.

A complaint has been filed with the Liberal party about 60 members allegedly signed up improperly by Ignatieff's camp in two Toronto-area ridings, including one man in Ignatieff's constituency said to have died two years ago.

The complaint, filed Monday with the Ontario wing of the party, comes on the heels allegations that Volpe's team improperly signed up scores of members in Montreal.

It includes signed statements from three of the members who each declare that "my membership fees were kindly paid for by the Michael Ignatieff leadership campaign."

As well, the complaint lists 11 members in the riding of Brampton-Springdale who all gave the same home address, which the complainant alleges is actually an Indian restaurant. Brampton Springdale is held by MP Ruby Dhalla, a top Ignatieff supporter.

"Everybody's on a witch hunt," observed Dave Pretlove, executive director of the Ontario wing.

So who is more honest? The one who signed up fewer dead people?

The complaint was filed by George Kunz, a longtime Liberal from Burlington who said he's not affiliated with any of the leadership camps.

He said he began "doing some digging" after hearing about irregularities from several Liberal friends.

"I'd like to see the party do things according to its own rules. I don't want to see one camp be unfair to another camp," Kunz said in an interview shortly after filing his complaint.

He said he spoke to the widow of the man who died two years ago and said "she was quite shocked that he was a voting member."

I decided to see what the Stop Iggy people had to say. I was surprised to see this:

This site is temporarily unavailable.

According to the Google cache, the site was active as recently as 16-Sep-2006.

So I checked the registration, and now a new name is listed. The administrative contact is Marsha Akman:

Registrant:
n/a
5761 Honore de Balzac
Montreal, QC H4W1T3
CA

Domain name: STOPIGGY.COM

Administrative Contact:
Akman, Marsha marsha@stopiggy.com
5761 Honore de Balzac
Montreal, QC H4W1T3
CA
+1.5144874305

Who is Marsha Akman?

But the ''Stop Iggy'' symbols were first seen in Drummondville, Quebec in April -- when this site was registered. Here's the top of a Montreal Gazette story published April 30.

Standing in the crowded lobby of a local hotel, Marsha Akman was like a kid on a shopping spree.

"We have a meeting right now with Stephane Dion, then we're meeting Carolyn Bennett at 12, then we're going to be meeting (Ken) Dryden afterwards," said Akman, a Liberal activist in the riding of Mount Royal and a member of the party's women's commission. "We're going to start talking issues and get a feel for how they are and go from there."

Like many members of the federal party's Quebec wing, Akman does not yet know who will get her vote when Liberals meet in early December in Montreal to choose their next leader.

However, she has already scratched one candidate off her list. "It's anybody but Ignatieff," said Akman, sporting two "Stop Iggy" stickers on her shirt to protest what she sees as Michael Ignatieff's right-wing views.

Could there be a connection?

Apparently there was. More of the same sentiment at Ken Dryden's website:

For veteran Mount Royal Liberal, Marsha Akman, who came out to see Dryden, the campaign so far is not so much about who she supports but more of an active campaign to stop leading candidate Michael Ignatieff.

“I think the top three are Dryden, Stephane Dion and Gerard Kennedy. I’m not supporting any candidate at this point, but I do know that the worst thing for the party would be to have Ignatieff become leader,” she said. “This is a guy who calls himself a left-of-centre Liberal but supported the invasion of Iraq and called Israel an apartheid state. There’s no way he could win Canada for us.”

Now that's interesting, because when the Ottawa Citizen asked other leadership campaigns about what they thought of StopIggy.com, most were against it:

Representatives from other campaigns reached by the Ottawa Citizen slammed the website and the way the e-mails were sent, adding they were sure the lists were not leaked from their campaigns. Representatives from the campaigns of Scott Brison, Stephane Dion and Gerard Kennedy did not return calls.

So Dion and Kennedy have no comment about StopIggy.com, and Dion and Kennedy are two of the three top candidates named by StopIggy.com administrator Marsha Akman. Interesting.

Were any of the campaign backing Akman's efforts? Who is Akman supporting? And why was the site taken down? Especially since it would seem that Michael Ignatieff is vulnerable right now.

One more thing. How appropriate is it for a member of one the Liberal Party's women's commission (I haven't found confirmation of this yet, by the way) to be actively campaigning against one of the candidates? Should commissions be impartial, since they are providing advice to all candidates on the issues?

Question for my readers: Try to access StopIggy.com and put a comment as to your success. I keep getting a "Site Disabled" page, but one other reader is seeing the site fine. Have I been banned?

Update: A Firefox problem? I can access the site via Internet Explorer.