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(Posted
9:30 p.m., Sept. 13)
Local MP comes under fire for campaign
photo-op
By Fred Sherwin
Orléans Online
Ottawa-Orléans
MP Royal Galipeau's campaign got off to a bumpy start earlier this
week after he and Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Rona Ambrose
appeared at the Boomerang Kids store in Orleans Garden for a photo-op.
 Store
owner Krista Thompson says she was contacted by someone in Galipeau's
office on Monday asking if the MP and the Minister could drop by the
store to make a major campaign announcement on child care.
Although
Thompson says she has not yet made up her mind on who she is going
to vote for, she agreed, thinking that it would be a good opportunity
to gain some exposure for the new store which hosts free exercise
and social gatherings every weekday morning. But when Ambrose showed
up with Galipeau the next morning, she simply had herself photographed
with the other women while walking a stroller and left without making
any major announcement,
The whole
exercise left Thompson, a 37-year-old mother of three, feeling duped.
"It's
embarrassing," Thompson told a Canadian Press reporter. "I'm
feeling incredibly naive about the whole thing. The truth of the matter
is that we agreed to do it because they said they were making a big
announcement about child care and what became evident by the end of
the day was there was no announcement."
By way
of offering some sort of explanation, Galipeau's campaign manager
Wendy Noble Woodcock said she was given false information by the Conservative
Party's national campaign headquarters.
When contacted
by OrleansOnline.ca, Galipeau chalked it up to some overzealous national
campaign organizers.
"I
was quite angry by the whole thing and I still am. You know when you
first start a campaign everyone is gung ho and some mistakes are going
to be made, this was one of those mistakes," said Galipeau who
went back to Boomerang Kids the next day to offer an apology, but
Thompson was not in.
(This
story was made possible thanks to the generous support of our local
business partners.)
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