Canada PoliticsFederal Liberal candidate changes online bio after questions raised about its accuracy
Let's face it: There's a lot of people out there who pad their resumes.
Maybe it's not a big deal when you're applying to be Walmart greeter or a store cashier but I don't think we want our politicians doing that.
Well, there's allegations of that in Manitoba.
A politician running to be the federal Liberal candidate for an upcoming byelection in Brandon-Souris has changed his online biography after questions were raised about what he had written with regard to his affiliation with social media giant Facebook.
Rolf Dinsdale, who is so far the only Liberal candidate in Brandon-Souris, had originally written this on his website:
...[Dinsdale] then became a senior executive at the leading social media network Facebook, and guided its Canadian business operations until 2009.
On Wednesday afternoon, he changed it to this:
...[Dinsdale] then became the senior executive responsible for Facebook’s business development in Canada at their agency partner Segal Communications, and led the Facebook Canada team until 2009.
In an interview with the Canadian Press, Dinsdale said that while he was never an employee of Facebook, he did work for Canadian-based Segal Communications, which was contracted by Facebook to oversee advertising and sales in Canada.
"I don't think I'm being misleading at all," Dinsdale told CP on Wednesday before making the change to his website.
"I'll be very clear. I never worked directly for Facebook. I was a third-party agent. But this is very typical when companies expand into Canada, in the media business, that they'll hire Canadian companies to represent them here."
[ Related: Liberals produce slick video of contest winners enjoying a ‘BBQ with Justin’ ]
If he was exaggerating, he's certainly not the first politician to do so.
In the 2011 election, NDP MP Ruth Ellen Brosseau's biography said that she had a college diploma even though she didn't. The official line from the New Democrats was that a staffer "inadvertently" wrote that in her bio.
In the recent B.C. provincial election, NDP MLA Jane Shin got into hot water for allegedly misrepresenting her educational and professional credentials. According to reports, her Korean and Chinese bios hinted that she graduated from the University of British Columbia's medical program and was a practicing doctor. It turned out that she graduated from a school in the Caribbean and never actually practiced medicine in Canada. Shin blamed that mistake on a translator.
(Photo from Twitter)
Are you a politics junkie?
Follow @politicalpoints on Twitter!
