Liberals Should Be Rebranded As Waffle Party

Another example of Dion's need to get a road map......

Dion backtracks on return of party exile
Liberal Leader won't seek reinstatement of official banned over sponsorship scandal

CAMPBELL CLARK AND JANE TABER

QUEBEC -- Stéphane Dion was forced to backtrack yesterday from a controversial comment that he would allow back into the party a senior organizer who was banned for life over sponsorship-scandal misdeeds.

Mr. Dion told the Quebec City newspaper Le Soleil that he would not object to the lifting of the ban on senior organizer Marc-Yvan Côté, who admitted he distributed $120,000 in cash to Liberal candidates during the 1997 election campaign -- money diverted from the sponsorship program.

Mr. Dion's gaffe brought back a whiff of the scandal that the Liberals had hoped was behind them. Opponents seized on the remark as evidence that the new Liberal Leader has a lax attitude toward the improprieties members of his party committed.

The lifetime ban on Mr. Côté -- a former provincial health minister who was for years the Liberal strongman in the Quebec City area -- was perhaps too severe, Mr. Dion told the newspaper in an interview published yesterday.

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