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Allison Jones, The Canadian Press Published Thursday, February 19, 2015 10:47AM EST Last Updated Thursday, February 19, 2015 4:19PM EST

TORONTO -- Two Ontario Liberals, including the premier's deputy chief of staff, appear to have contravened a bribery section of the Election Act, the province's electoral officer said Thursday in an "unprecedented" finding.

An Elections Ontario investigation found there is evidence that Premier Kathleen Wynne's deputy chief of staff, Pat Sorbara, and a local Liberal organizer offered a would-be candidate a job or appointment to get him to step aside in a recent byelection in Sudbury.

For weeks the premier has refused opposition calls to remove Sorbara from her role while under investigation and the government has said it is unable to step in to remove Gerry Lougheed as chair of the city's police services board.

The demands grew louder Thursday after Elections Ontario's conclusions were tabled in the legislature just minutes before question period, apparently catching the premier off guard.

"We all just got this information," Wynne said more than half a dozen times. "We are taking it under advisement...What I will not do is take rash advice from the other side of the floor until I've had an opportunity to consider all of the information."

The Liberals were quick to point out that Elections Ontario did not implicate Wynne herself nor Glenn Thibeault, the former NDP MP who won the Feb. 5 byelection for the Liberals.

Greg Essensa, the chief electoral officer of Ontario, concluded that Sorbara and Lougheed's actions "constitute an apparent contravention" of a section of the Election Act concerning "bribery in connection with inducing a person to become, refrain from becoming, or withdrawing from being a candidate."

Essensa called the circumstances "unprecedented."

"No chief electoral officer of Ontario has ever conducted a regulatory investigation into allegations of bribery or ever reported an apparent contravention of the Election Act or the Election Finances Act to the Ministry of the Attorney General," he said in his statement.

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Liberals apparently contravened Election Act

Liberals Stop Helping part 3
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By: shakaama

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Liberals Stop Helping part 3 - Video

Liberals should embrace Rudd-style party reform 04:27
Reforms that make it harder to depose leaders- similar to those enacted in the dying days of Kevin Rudd #39;s leadership- should be embraced by the Liberal party...

By: Wedel Sharon

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Liberals should embrace Rudd-style party reform 04:27 - Video

On the first sitting day of the House of Commons since her defection, former Conservative MP Eve Adams kept a low profile. Anyone looking for a preview of how she would stack up in debate against Finance Minister Joe Oliver in the GTA riding of Eglinton-Lawrence will have to wait.

But it will take more than a few bouts of sparring in question period to put Liberal minds to rest over the latest addition to Justin Trudeaus caucus.

A week after the Liberal leader rolled out the red carpet for Adamss floor crossing the episode remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma for most Liberals.

On that score a weekend trip to Vancouver that featured a handful of conversations with veteran party insiders on the West Coast mostly confirmed that the move has baffled Liberals from coast to coast.

Those insiders like most observers start from the premise that Trudeaus team of advisers is a seasoned one. In their minds, such battle-hardened strategists would or should have expected both the editorial backlash and the internal discontent that attended the decision to bring Adams and by the same token former Stephen Harper confidant Dimitri Soudas on board.

Few buy the line that Adams is so ideally placed to take on Oliver on the battlefield of the Conservative income-splitting measure as to be worth her weight in political gold.

As flawed as the policy of allowing parents to split their income for tax purposes may be, it does not have the legs to move mountains of votes that a tax hike for instance would have.

In the same breath, most of them dismiss the notion that Soudas has such invaluable insights on what makes a now-familiar prime minister tick on a debate podium as suggested among others by former Conservative minister Stockwell Day as to make signing up his fiance an irresistible proposition.

If anything, Adamss inclusion on the Trudeau team has more to do with a dogged Liberal quest for deterrence on the field of dirty tricks than with making inroads in voting intentions.

Conservative spin doctors have been quietly bragging about having collected dirt on Trudeau ever since he ran for the leadership.

The rest is here:
Liberals Eve Adams play a defensive move in attack-ad ...

Whether it's unions oruniversities,Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) has waged a number of huge fights -- symbolic and otherwise -- with liberals. So far, thefights have only served to bolster his credentials among national conservatives who like nothing more than a Republican willing to poke liberals in the eye.

And now New York Times columnist Gail Collins has thrown Walker another hanging curveball by which to bash liberals and shine in the eyes of conservatives.

In a recent column widelyderidedas a "hit piece" by conservatives, Collins centered on Walker's breakout speech in Iowa, declaring that it was "his moment." Known for her stream-of-consciousness writing style, Collins sets herself up as a kind of fact-checker of Walker's record. She blames the governor for cutting state aid to education that led to teacher layoffs -- particularly in regard to one teacher who had been honored.

But there was just one big problem with that assertion: Walker wasn't actually in office when saidcuts were made.

Theheadline -- "Scott Walker Needs an Eraser"-- pretty muchsaid it all, except it wasn't Walker who needed one.

The correction, which came two days after the column was posted, said: "An earlier version of this column incorrectly stated that teacher layoffs in Milwaukee in 2010 happened because Gov. Scott Walker 'cut state aid to education.' The layoffs were made by the citys school system because of a budget shortfall, before Mr. Walker took office in 2011."

Walker's conservative fans immediately seized on Collins's mistake.

Here's the Weekly Standard:

The National Review:

Newsbusters:

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The Fix: Scott Walker is a conservative hero, and liberals have themselves to blame for it