Angry in the Great White North

As you might remember, the former NDP candidate for the Quebec riding of Riviere-des-Mille-Iles, Francis Chartrand, maintains a blog (mirrored in English and French).  When Francis Chartrand was dumped as a candidate, he posted what I call the "angry" post that described the circumstances around the end of his candidacy:

I deplore the apparent lack of transparency on the part of the Electoral Planning Committee and of the leader Jack Layton, who have stripped my candidacy, based on decisions which they have claimed to be in the best interest of the party in guise of democratic principles.

I ask why I was privy to this information through the media.

I also ask that the party make public the reasons for having eliminated my candidacy in this matter.

I also wish to remind that during my nomination meeting held in St-Eustache last February 24, Quebec Section President, Piper Huggins and Quebec councillor to Jack Layton, Pierre Ducasse were present to support my candidacy. What are their present positions on this matter?

I will wait for answers to these persisting questions and to have a clearer picture on this matter before I stake my position in an upcoming press conference.

Francis Chartrand

That was replaced with a very different and very conciliatory post:

Over the course of the last few hours, I have found myself caught in the midst of a web controversy which simply should never have begun. In reality, it is true that several weeks ago, party officials contacted me to discuss my involvement as an active member of the party. I came to understand the necessity of putting my candidacy aside, and to reflect on the best possible way for me to contribute to the development of the NDP.

I have become increasingly involved within the party over the last while. It was time to stop and ask the following question: is continuing on as NDP candidate in Rivières-des-Mille-Isle the best choice for me at this time?

To be forced to ask the question is to know the answer. I understand that at this time, I can bring much more to the party as an active member within the organization and that in this role, I have the support of the party and many of its officers. I beleive [sic] that the NDP remains and continues to be the only party with a solid social-democratic vision and that it is in our interest to spread the word of the NDP to as many people as possible.

This is why given current circumstances, I decided to pull my candidacy in the next election and why I hope to play an active role in organizing the campaign in Rivières-des-Mille-Isle in the coming months.

In solidarity,
Francis Chartrand

Now when I had posted the story about the angry post, both it and the conciliatory post were missing.  I extracted both from the Google cache, and so revealed that the end of Chartrand's candidacy had the potential to be embarrassing for the NDP.

But we were left with the question of which of the two posts represented the true feelings of Francis Chartrand.

In the days that followed, a strange sequence of changes took place, when one post or the other was removed and restored.  Since just before Christmas, however, the blog has been stable.  The angry post is up and the conciliatory post was nowhere to be seen, and there were two more title-only posts, one referencing NDP election committee chair Raymond Guardia, and the other declaring that the blog had been hacked.

It has been my suspicion that the NDP forced Chartrand to remove the angry post and put up the conciliatory post, or that control of the blog was shifting back and forth between Chartrand and the NDP (hence the "hacking" reference).

But if so, why all the changes to the blog?  If I was right about the NDP compelling Chartrand to put a smile on in public, why did Francis Chartrand feel that he could ignore the party's desire to keep his angry denouncement off the blog?  Why did the angry post keep making a reappearance, and why does it now seem to be a permanent fixture on his blog?

Apparently this blog was the reason.  Thanks to a reader in Quebec, I've been directed to a story in La Presse that was published the day after I revealed that Chartrand's blog carried two very distinct versions of the events in question. I get the credit for digging up the two posts.  The reporter confronted Chartrand about the two contradictory posts.  Why had one of the posts been deleted, presumably with the hope no one would ever know it ever existed? 

Perhaps Chartrand was under some compulsion not to discuss the matter, and certainly not his angry denouncement of Jack Layton and the NDP.  Perhaps he had a moment's doubt about how to answer, about whether he ought to maintain the fiction that the angry post was made in error and should be ignored by the reporter.  But with the story out in the open, it didn't matter any more, and Chartrand cut loose.  He not only explained that the angry post was the honest post, but also that it was officials from the NDP who had forced him to withdraw it and post an entirely different version that cast the NDP in a good light:

The reaction of Francis Chartrand has been meat and drink for the conservative blogosphere.  The author of the site stevejanke.com said yesterday that he had managed to find an archived version of an article published Sunday. In the latter, the disappointed candidate asked for an explanation for his shelving.

"I ask why I was privy to this information through the media," it read.

However, Mr. Chartrand's site now offers another version, dated Monday.  He says that he himself took the decision in question. He said he now intends to concentrate his efforts in organizing the party.

"In reality, it is true that several weeks ago, party officials contacted me to discuss my involvement as an active member of the party," he writes.  "I came to understand the necessity of putting my candidacy aside, and to reflect on the best possible way for me to contribute to the development of the NDP. "

Yesterday evening, Chartrand told La Presse that members of the NDP in Ottawa and Montreal had applied pressure on him to modify his first statement.  "I did not resign," he said. "I really learned through the media over the weekend that the party had rejected me."

I'm glad I was able to enable Francis Chartrand to come clean by independently getting his side of the story out.  Of course, it means the NDP looks like it's guilty of playing some spinning games, trying to rewrite history and hide the truth.  Ironically, Jack Layton tends to score well with Canadians when asked about leadership qualities on the strength of Jack Layton's perceived honesty.

Call this a small example of how Jack Layton and the NDP is no more and no less honest than any other party.

One last thing: Why was Francis Chartrand rejected as a candidate in the first place?  According to the La Presse article, Chartrand held a hardline against so-called "reasonable accommodation" for minorities.  He was "opposed to reasonable accommodation everywhere".

Check out other entries from the Francis Chartrand category
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