Provincial Tory Candidate Goes To Ground

A provincial Tory candidate for Markham-Unionville appears to have gone underground after allegations he is linked to the National Council of Canadian Tamils (NCCT), which a Toronto newspaper this week called a new Tamil separatist group with remnants of the banned Tamil Tigers.

[...]

Mr. Thayaparan said he was happy to give an interview on the situation and offered to do so in person the next day after first checking with his lawyer.

However, Mr. Thayaparan has not made himself available since...

My take on this is that Mr. Thayaparen is probably a more or less innocent victim of the kind of anti-Tamil paranoia that the federal Torys have kicked up over the past couple of years for base political purposes. Sri Lanka is a small island country with 20,000,000 aboard, and it simply isn't fair to tag everyone who knew someone who knew a Tamil Tiger with the "terrorist" epithet.

Nevertheless, there is that picture, which makes Mr. Thayaparen's involvement look a little bit deeper. He needs to provide an explanation for it. Hiding will serve him poorly at this juncture.

Ontario PCs Already Disgruntled (And: Federal Gov. To Fall In June?)

Fresh from ridding their party of its last semblance of moderation, the Ontario PCs are already looking to the future and, lo and behold, its pissing them off:

I'm hearing disgusting rumours that the Executive of the Ontario PC's are actually considering rushing the just announced Leadership vote, attempting to set things into motion for a June Leadership convention.Hello? Have you guys in the Toronto ivory towers learned NOTHING? What is this, the Liberal Party of Canada, where the powers-that-be get to choose the Leader without the input of the grassroots?

Note the Toronto-bashing already.

Taste more outrage here, where we also have a theory in the comments as to what might lie behind the unseemly rush:

...Brian Patterson ( who was dumped by Tory only after numerous complaints after the 2007 Election) has found his way back into the Party as 1st VP. Patterson wants a quick [leadership] election for reasons unknown - but prevailing opinion is that if you follow Pattersons instincts you end up worse off then when you started.

Probably the most interesting factoid comes from Stephen Taylor, who sees the Ontario Tories as vacillating between two possible dates, June and September. The justification behind September being:

The thinking is that this best time that won’t interfere with a potential federal election.

So I guess the possibility of another Federal election in 2009 is a real one. I am assuming Taylor's musings have the Harper government falling in early summer (June?), and a Federal election having been wound up before the September Ontario PC convention.

Ontario PCs Vote To Maintain Communist Element

...as Randy Hillier might put it.

On the other hand, you might say they voted to keep their youth wing.