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Local resident linked NDP candidate to terrorist organization

Sep 8, 2006
By Jillian Follert

OSHAWA -- Seven months after losing a roller coaster race for Oshawa’s MP seat, former NDP candidate and CUPE President Sid Ryan has filed a million-dollar lawsuit against a local resident, claiming libelous materials distributed during the race might have cost him the election.

In January 2006, just days before the vote, flyers were circulated that attempted to link Mr. Ryan to Sein Finn, an Irish political party that is widely considered to be the political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
Ok, I read it. Not sure Sid has a case.
What was HIS explanation for that photograph?
I notice he didn't offer one.

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The guy he's sueing is well connected with Conservative riding politics here in Oshawa, but was not apparently formally active in this one campaign. He's also a CAW guy who's camiagned at length against his union supporting any progressive causes.

I'm not sure what, if anything, MP Colin Carrie knows aboutit all. Probably not much, I don;t get the impression he reads the papers beyond the comics section. His official hatchet man and "brains behind the smile" Andrew Morin distanced himself fromth is slanderous pamphlet pretty fast once it started to go sour.

I was in the the NDP campaign office the day this hit the fan. Sid was more than a little pissed.

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Originally posted by Ken Burch:
Ok, I read it. Not sure Sid has a case.
What was HIS explanation for that photograph?
I notice he didn't offer one.

(don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the charge was accurate. But wouldn't Sid have to prove that there was no truth to it at all, and exactly how would he do that?)

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Christina Blizzard of Oz wrote a column about this back in January, Dirty tricks target Ryan:

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Ryan was once part of an all-party peace delegation to Northern Ireland and was a go-between for the two warring parties. This smear smacks of the same kind of guilt-by-last-name that suggests all Italians are part of the mafia. If you have an Irish last name, you must be IRA.

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Originally posted by Scott Piatkowski:

Ohfergawdssake! The explanation was that he was part of a Canadian delegation to the Northern Ireland peace talks.

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Whoa, lighten up there, Scott. I hadn't heard the story of the picture OR of the anti-Ryan handout. I realized that the implication was almost certainly bogus and was just trying to work out the question of whether Sid had an actionable case.

I wasn't defending the smear. I just didn't know the story, ok?

Jeeezzzz...

And now that I have heard the story, I agree that Sid DOES in fact have a case. I hope he takes the bastard for everything he's got.

[ 09 September 2006: Message edited by: Ken Burch ]

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An Oshawa resident will appear in court this week facing two charges under the Federal Elections Act, over attempts to link an NDP candidate to an Irish terrorist group.

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"I'm very pleased Elections Canada has now stepped in and said this was a breach of the Elections Act, which I said at the beginning," Mr. Ryan said last week. "He not only smeared my name and possibly cost me the election, I think he may have endangered my life by labelling me in the manner that he did."

Mr. Ryan's run for the Oshawa seat was initially regarded as one of the tightest races in the country, after he lost to Mr. Carrie by about 400 votes in 2004. The results widened in the 2006 election to a difference of more than 2,000 votes.

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Originally posted by oldgoat:
The guy who disitributed these pamphlets did so knowing full well it was a lie.

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However, what I find disturbing is that winning the election apparently makes a difference to this person of millions of dollars.