Ottawa

Officially ungrammatical

In a widely obtained internal memo, the Conservatives claim that the ungrammatical inclusion of the word “not” was in keeping with normal procedure.

“In this case, the Minister’s decision was to reject the recommendation provided to her, and direct that CIDA not provide funding to KAIROS,” it read. “The Minister had reviewed the memo, made her decision not to approve the funding application, and asked her staff to follow through on it.

“The Minister was travelling out of Ottawa on the day that her staff completed the paper work to implement her decision, so they, with the Minister’s authority, applied her automated signature, which is used when required because a Minister is unable to personally sign a document, and indicated her decision on the memo by clearly indicating that she did NOT approve the funding application.”

This is close to the explanation offered to Embassy last October when a spokeswoman for Ms. Oda claimed it to be a matter of antiquated paperwork. Last week though, Keith Beardsley, a former member of the  PMO, wrote that Ms. Oda could have simply not signed the document. Our Andrew Coyne suggests, if it was normal procedure, that there should be other documents with the same edit.

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