"I have done crazy things," Holland says

"If you vote for the Liberals, I will give you cigarettes," said the then campaign worker, Nikki Holland to people at a Toronto Shelter.  Holland is now the Ontario Liberal Party's operational vice-president.  She was reciting stories to Liberal volunteers attending a training session for this election and was caught on audio tape telling this and other stories.

Nikki Holland

The tape was made available to media today and the Liberals went into big time damage control.

The actual words on tape were: ...

"I have done crazy things," Holland says in the audio recording. "Like ... and if anyone repeats this I'll deny it (until) the cows come home ... I have gone to a shelter in the riding of St. Paul's with a carton of smokes and said, 'I'll give you them after you vote.' I have done that ... but they were already smokers."

True to her word, Holland is denying she did it but the cows may not have come home.  Further she says she was talking about tactics used by the NDP and Conservatives.  Holland says she just got carried away telling the story in front of a partisan crowd, (presumably friendly) and now regrets it.

A spokesperson for the Liberal Party denies the Ontario Liberal Party has ever done this kind of thing but that he has heard lots of stories about dirty tricks committed by the NDP and Conservatives.

Now why would the Liberal spokesperson add to the story with his ludicrous claim of innocence. Angels must be rising from the smoke of those cigarettes or the Liberal spokesperson is smoking pot.  Next the Liberal's will be releasing evidence that McGuinty is related to both Mary, Mother of God and Mohamed.

Holland's story is for her memoirs, not for a class of new volunteers, people that will be out there acting in a official capacity for your party.  And having got caught by your own words, its extremely bad form to blame someone else for your mouth.  Own up to it and hope the story dies.  Blaming the other parties while professing your innocence just makes you look well, it makes you look deceitful.

see Winnipeg Sun 
For audio go to the Toronto Sun here