TORONTO – A federal Conservative candidate in Quebec who reportedly acknowledged his campaign was part of an art project intended to mess with the party has resigned.
But a quick glance at some of Chris Lloyd’s Facebook posts for the Conservative Party riding of Papineau leading up to his resignation show the candidate was poking fun at the party for months.
According to media reports, Lloyd’s campaign was part of an elaborate art project and Conservative spokesman Marc-Andre Leclerc confirmed in an email Tuesday that he had resigned.
Whether he was suggesting holding a screening of Harrison Ford’s 1994 classic Clear and Present Danger, or commenting about building “more prisons for local criminals” in a post about the government’s Faster Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, it’s clear that Lloyd wasn’t taking his candidacy too seriously.
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“Most candidates are running to win and even if they don’t have a hope in hell of winning, they’d run a typical campaign. What would happen if someone runs one that’s off-message, doesn’t have a message, changes the message,” Lloyd said during a lecture he gave in March at an art centre in Fredericton, N.B., as reported in St. Thomas University’s student newspaper The New Brunswick Beacon.
“If I have a goal, it’s that – to own the message and change it at whim, but still do it within certain parameters of the Conservative party.”
Lloyd wrote on his Dear PM blog he had been in daily communication with Prime Minister Stephen Harper since 2001, but despite the fact his blog posts seemed to poke fun at the Tories, no red flags were raised at Conservative Party headquarters until news reports surfaced Tuesday.
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Conservative MPs refused to comment publicly on Lloyd’s project.
A simple Internet search on Lloyd reveals he is an artist and New Brunswick native whose Dear PM blog contains several posts of Tim Hortons coffee cups along with the words “I am still alive.”
His blog also shows a photo of a cheque written out for $30 billion for the purchase of F-35s.
Lloyd was acclaimed as the Conservative candidate for the riding of Papineau and was to have run against Trudeau in the upcoming federal election.
*With files from The Canadian Press
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