Angry in the Great White North

I have more detailed quotes from the offer David Pretlove made to the London riding association in which he was going to use Liberal Party funds under his control to cover the shortfall in the riding association accounts that a criminal lawyer had concluded was the result of theft.

Former treasurer Suzan Pawlak was the prime suspect in the eyes of the riding association. When David Pretlove made his offer in February, Suzan Pawlak was on his staff. Pretlove was the financial director for the Ontario wing of the federal Liberal Party. Pretlove's offer was explicit -- he would use LPC(O) money to cover the losses as long as no investigation, criminal or otherwise, now or in the future, take place, and no other actions be pursued.

Here are excerpts from Pretlove's actual offer to the London riding association:

[B]y Friday February 23, 2006 the LPC(O) will ensure that [either support documentation is provided by Pawlak or] a cheque representing the amount in question is issued and sent to the attention of Mr. Norm Feaver, riding association president by the LPC(O). My current understanding of the amounts in question are the following that were sent to me by Mr. Feaver on January, 23, 2007...

Notice that he says the LPC(O) will provide the cheque.

According to this, riding association president Norm Feaver reported the problem to David Pretlove on January 23. This makes sense. Riding association money was missing, and David Pretlove was the financial director for the Ontario wing of the party. He had to be informed that there was a major problem with the finances in one of the Ontario ridings.

Did Feaver ask that the money be replaced, or was he merely reporting on the problem? I think the latter, since if Feaver was asking for the money to be replaced, why would then reject the offer to replace the money and call the offer "ill-advised". I think the offer to replace the money was a surprise, and ultimately not a pleasant one.

Now we know that the new treasurer identified nearly $15,000 in missing money. I am going to assume that the total amount missing was reported to David Pretlove. If so, it would seem like David Pretlove was challenging the correctness of the list. Pretlove goes on to identify nine transactions between January 12, 2006 and March 23, 2006. One was a hotel bill amounting to $1,015.38, while the others were cheques made out to Suzan Pawlak, ranging from $200 to over $1600.

The total was about $7,200.

These are the ones he was willing to pay off using LPC(O) money. The others? He seems to say that they don't pass muster and that the riding association made a mistake in including them on the list.

He asks the riding association to "clarify the current amount that remains in question".

Once that clarification was received (and accepted) and a cheque issued to cover the amount, "there must be an assurance from the executive of the EMLFLA (in writing from the association president) that there will be no further action taken and the matter will be considered closed."

If the riding association could not "clarify" the other $8,000 in missing funds (presumably the evidence regarding those transactions were not unambiguously linked to Pawlak), then the riding association would have to accept the $7,200 offer and be done with it. Even if new evidence was uncovered related to Pawlak and the remaining $8,000, or if more money was found to be missing, the riding association would be unable to pursue any action because of this written promise.

So Pretlove was going to cover $7,200 but the riding association was out $15,000. Pretlove was apparently telling the riding association to take half, be grateful, and be quiet.

Maybe that's why the offer was rejected. Maybe if Pretlove had not played hardball on the amount...well, we can't be sure what happened when the riding association got the offer.

He seems to scold the riding association for not having submitted all the documentation for 2005, calling their filings "incomplete" and reminding them of the "drop dead deadline" of March 31, 2007 imposed by Elections Canada.

Of course it was incomplete! It was incomplete by $15,000! What was Pretlove trying to get across with this?

Was this a way of putting pressure on the riding association? Remind them that they only had a handful of weeks to complete their filings, in order to encourage them to take the $7,200 and clean up the remaining $8,000 mess on their own before Elections Canada started breathing down their necks?

Pretlove's generous offer seems more like strong-arm tactics now, doesn't it?

Pretlove also demands that the riding association provide details on what they had on Suzan Pawlak:

Please advise me of Susan [sic] Pawlak's responsibility on this issue as well. What term (time period) of 2005 did she serve as the treasurer/financial agent? What documentation for the year is not currently available, what other outstanding matters are there regarding this issue?

A fishing expedition to see what other problems need to be papered over?

So David Pretlove offers to use party funds to cover only some of the missing money in return for a blanket promise not dig any deeper. He challenges the riding association to prove the case for the whole amount, demands that the assocation reveal anything else they know about Suzan Pawlak, and then reminds the association in no uncertain terms that there is only a limited amount of time left Elections Canada gets involved.

But really, David Pretlove is a nice guy:

Mike Crawley, the president of the Liberal Party of Canada (Ontario), said that Mr. Pretlove acted without party approval.

"He is an individual of very sound judgment and is a nice person, and unfortunately, the latter characteristic took hold."

Imagine what the offer would have sounded like if he was not a nice person.

I'd be curious to know why Pretlove was willing to pay for that hotel bill, though.

Update: That hotel cheque was for a party function It was dated January 12, 2006, just before the 2006 election vote (the vote was on January 23). I've checked and a friend also looked, and we can't find any report for a London riding association event at that hotel within a month before or after January 12. That might explain why the cheque was on the list of questionable expenses.

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