The Globe and Mail - Tuesday, June 15, 2004 - Page A6 

Liberal justice can be painful

By JANE TABER
With reports from Jill Mahoney, Mark Hume and Katherine Harding

Senior Martin strategists warned MPs during a conference call last 
week about "friendly fire." The warning came after Mississauga 
Liberal MP Carolyn Parrish publicly criticized her national campaign 
team, comparing Liberal strategists to Keystone Kops. Ontario 
campaign chairman Karl Littler cautioned everyone on the conference 
call to be "judicious in their statements."

Indeed.

The story going around on the weekend was that the national 
strategists were doling out some of their own justice and the 
recipient was none other than Ms. Parrish. Star Liberal candidate 
Ken Dryden was scheduled to attend an event in Ms. Parrish's riding 
to perk up the troops, but he was a no-show. This, according to 
inside rumours, was her punishment for her comments. 
"I didn't feel punished," she said yesterday. "I was told he had 
strep throat."

Mr. Dryden did not call back. Throat issues? Perhaps. In fact, there 
seems to be a bit of throat trouble going around. Last week, 
Renfrew-Nipissing-Pembroke Tory MP Cheryl Gallant came down with 
laryngitis just after she got herself in some trouble for saying 
that the law protecting gays and lesbians from hate crimes should be 
repealed, suggesting it could shield pedophiles.

Nice hair
Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's performance at last night's 
debate may not have been so hot, but his hair was. Thick, neat and 
styled, his new debate haircut was the buzz around the National Arts 
Centre. No wonder. Mr. Harper has his hair done by one of Ottawa's 
most competent and well-known stylists to the political right wing 
-- Rinaldo Canonica. "He has nice hair," Mr. Canonica recently told 
The Globe's Jan Wong. And he doesn't use spray or gel, says Mr. 
Canonica, who also styles the hair of Mr. Harper's wife, Laureen 
Teskey. Mr. Canonica has always been most closely associated with 
Mila Mulroney and those trademark bangs of hers. His scissors earned 
him a patronage appointment from Mrs. Mulroney's husband, Brian, the 
Tory prime minister from 1984 to 1993. Mr. Canonica was appointed to 
the board of the Federal Business Development Bank in 1991. For the 
2000 election, he cut the hair of Valorie Day, the wife of Mr. 
Harper's predecessor, Stockwell Day, creating a Sharon Stone-like 
masterpiece. 

I buried Paul
(McCartney not Martin)
Wonderful talk around the political water coolers yesterday after 
the Bourque Newswatch website (Bourque is Canada's equivalent to the 
Drudge Report) reported subliminal messages in the new Liberal 
attack ad. 

The ad shows the barrel of a gun pointing at the screen, mocking the 
Conservative pledge to scrap the gun registry. According to the 
Bourque report, the gun actually fires in the ad. Bourque reports 
that "a single frame showing a bright flash appears between the view 
of the gun and the view of the smokestacks."

That so-called "flash frame" has provoked similar intrigue, for 
example, as did John Lennon's remarks at the end of Strawberry 
Fields Forever, when he supposedly said, "I buried Paul." (By the 
way, the late Mr. Lennon claimed he really said, "Cranberry sauce." 
And if you read the Tory platform upside down it says . . . majority 
government.) 

Hot and Not:
Hot: Jane Crosbie for being such a good sport. It is revealed that 
one of the reasons why Newfoundland political Tory icon John Crosbie 
decided not to run in this election was because his wife, Jane, was 
undergoing bladder surgery. Her bladder is now the "talk of the 
town," according to a Newfoundland newspaper. She is in good 
spirits, recovering at home.

Not: Conservative Leader Stephen Harper for saying he would scrap 
the Kyoto Protocol. The Conservation Voters of B.C., a group 
modelled on a U.S. organization that has unseated dozens of 
environmentally unfriendly politicians, is raising money for an 
attack ad, mocking the Tories. 

"Stockwell Day said dinosaurs roamed the Earth at the same time as 
humans. . . . Turns out he was right," says the ad, featuring a 
picture of Mr. Harper giving the thumbs up sign. 

Hot: Coffee. A group of socially prominent Edmonton women from all 
political persuasions held a coffee party for Deputy Prime Minister 
Anne McLellan at Edmonton's Fantasyland Hotel yesterday. Ms. 
McLellan is in a tight race with Conservative candidate Laurie Hawn. 
These women want to see her re-elected -- thus, the coffee.