Dateline Toronto:

A high-ranking official within the Liberal Party of Canada resigned Monday after he made disparaging comments on his blog about NDP Leader Jack Layton and his wife, NDP candidate Olivia Chow.

Mike Klander, executive vice-president of the federal Liberal party’s Ontario wing, stepped down after photographs of Chow, NDP candidate for the Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina, and a chow chow dog were posted on his blog dated Dec. 9 under the heading Separated at Birth.

Here’s the cache of Klander’s blog. Here’s a screen capture of his attack on Chow:

The photos have been removed, but the damage is done.

Canadian blogger Stephen Taylor documented Klander’s bigoted blogging (he and other C-bloggers saved the photo) and also chronicled Klander’s other blunders. Taylor concludes:

All of these remarks by Mike Klander are offensive and disgusting to all Canadians and what is scary is that they were made by a senior Liberal official with the closest of ties to Paul Martin.

The Liberals are riding the largest corruption scandal in Canadian history and now we learn that there is bigotry at the highest levels of the party.

All of this suggests that it is time for the broken Liberal party to spend some time in the wilderness, as other parties have done…

(Hat tip: Kathy Shaidle, who notes in a separate post that Toronto recently welcomed Muslim radical Tariq Ramadan–whose visa was revoked here in the US–to town. Lost Budgie has more. Daniel Pipes has background.)

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Meanwhile, Ed Morrissey is keeping an eye on the Canadian elections:

The Liberals have what Ipsos refers to as “negative momentum”, while the Tories have a slight positive momentum. Canadian voters have also decided that Stephen Harper and the Tories have improved significantly more than Paul Martin and the Liberals — 31-18 nationally, but more ominously for the Liberals, 35-18 in Ontario. It spells disaster for the current Prime Minister. If he cannot hold a significant majority of seats in Ontario, then he will lose the entire election. Expect the Liberals to unleash heavy negative advertising starting as early as today in order to blunt the momentum that Harper has picked up in Ontario.