Tories found email joke not `offensive'

January 27, 2007 http://www.thestar.com/article/175541

OTTAWA–Complaints about a Conservative MP embroiled in controversy over an email that denigrates natives were investigated and dismissed after an internal probe by senior Tory officials, a former member of the MP's riding association told the Toronto Star. The email exchange occurred with a fellow board member in Colin Mayes' British Columbia riding of Okanagan-Shuswap in October, but emerged publicly only this week after an official with the riding association was fired for repeated complaints about the MP.

Among his complaints, Miles Lehn protested the controversial email, which he called "an embarrassment." He asked the president of the local riding association early last month if any disciplinary action would be taken, and was told about two weeks later that the Conservative party had investigated and found "nothing offensive about it." "What the (riding association) president said to me was that Mr. Donison from the Ottawa office of the party had exonerated Colin of any wrongdoing," Lehn said from Vernon, B.C. Michael Donison is the executive director of the Conservative Party of Canada, and he works out of the party's Ottawa offices. He did not respond to requests for an interview yesterday.