Incumbent Liberal candidate Borys Wrzesnewskyj didn’t enjoy his turkey last night. At least not the Conservative turkey he’s fighting, and claims has defamed his name based on attendance records.
Wrzesnewskyj said,
The Conservative candidate and the Conservative Party of Canada have made blatantly false statements about my voting record and attendance in the House of Commons and at committee meetings.
He’s dropping flyers with these statements on Thanksgiving weekend just before the election knowing that there’s a virtual impossibility to respond.
Justice George Strathy of the Ontario Superior Court Justice ruled that Kuhn must cease publishing and distributing the brochures.
In his decision Strathy J. said,
They imply that the plaintiff has been derelict in his duties as a member of Parliament and that he does not deserve to be paid his salary. Based upon the sworn evidence of the plaintiff, the words cannot be justified.
First, I’d like to advise the reader (is there one? Are there more?) that I am in complete opposition to Canada’s (and most countries’) conservative party policies and practices and, as such, have never cast a vote in favour of a conservative party. That said, due to some rather unusual circumstances that came about this summer, I am more than willing to voice my support for Axel Kuhn as well as support his alleged claim (I haven’t read the publication yet) that the liberal MP has “been derelict” in his duties.
On several occasions I phoned BW’s office to request assistance for my son, born in the UK to me (born and raised in Canada, to parents born and raised in Canada, I work and pay taxes and hold a valid Ontario Health card). Our problem surrounded Zach (my 3 year old son) not being eligible for Ontario public health coverage because his citizenship hadn’t (still hasn’t) come through yet. Zachary was born with an extremely rare paralysis called Erb’s palsy and is currently being screened for Autism Spectrum disorder, and finally, he has been diagnosed with Speech Apraxia which requires intense therapy. Needless to say, our medical appointments are many and to pay for them all would be an absurd financial strain – as well as unjust, but that’s a whole other argument.
Anyway, I attempted to contact BW on several occasions – by phone, via email, even by conventional post in the end. Each time I explained the urgency of our situation, that my 3 year old had no health coverage, and each time I received no response.
Enter AK. i had done a Google search to find out the name and contact details of my MP prior to contacting Boris or Axel or anyone. If you enter “MP Etobicoke Central” into the Google search engine, the first website to pop up is http://www.axelkuhn.ca/. So I phoned Axel first. He told me he wasn’t the MP, rather, a candidate, and gave me the contact details for Boris (and yes, they were correct). He told me to try with Boris and let him know how things went. I should add that he spoke to me personally and gave me a direct contact number by which I could reach him on his cell phone. So I went through the steps trying to get through to the Liberal representative with absolutely no response, and finally called Axel to see what he could do.
With AK’s guidance, my son had a health card within 3 weeks.
So is it excusable to publish nasty literature? Probably not. Was the content accurate? Seems so to me.