Curious little scandal

This whole business of the PMO supposedly punishing Diane Ablonczy for dishing out a $400,000 grant to help fund Toronto’s Gay Pride parade is really puzzling.

Conservative MP Brad Trost recently implied that Ablonczy offered the grant without clearing it with higher ups in the party.

That doesn’t ring true.

Given that Ablonczy is one of party’s smartest and most capable MPs, it just doesn’t seem likely she would “go rogue.”

Nor does it seem logical that Ablonczy, as Trost suggests, is being “punished” to appease angry social conservatives.

If that was the case why keep it secret?

I mean if your going to make an example out of somebody don’t you have make sure everybody knows what you are doing and why you are doing it?

Plus why was it so hard for the media to get a straight answer from the party as to whether or not Alboncy had lost responsibility for overseeing a government file?

Like I said, it’s puzzling.

The only thing for certain is that this whole thing is a PR disaster for the Tories.

Seems to me, they offered this grant as a way of pandering to gay voters, a move which they should have realized would have set off their so-con base.

But now they have not only alienated the so-cons, but whatever goodwill the grant generated with the gay community (which admittedly was probably not a lot) has vanished.

In fact, the media is spinning the story to make the Tories look more homophobic than ever – which will make it difficult for the party to make inroads in urban Ontario.

Better for the party (and for taxpayers) had they not given the grant in the first place.

Just as they should not have given a grant to an Ottawa Jazz festival, or to a Quebec balloon festival or to a potato research centre.