CANDIDATE'S LSD USE LATEST SPARK IN BY-ELECTION

NDP Accuses Liberals Of Double Standard

Liberals are being accused of having a double standard for slamming
NDP candidate Cheri DiNovo over past use of LSD when she was a
"street kid," after Health Minister George Smitherman's recent
admission he once was addicted to illegal drugs.

The latest flashpoint in the campaign for tomorrow's by-election in
Parkdale-High Park came yesterday in an Ontario Liberal Party
statement urging DiNovo, now a United Church minister, to "come
clean" on controversial remarks she made in the past.

Among other things, she admitted during a Vision TV program last
March and again in a sermon at her church to smuggling LSD from
California. "We did it in hollowed-out Bibles," DiNovo is quoted as
saying, calling the psychedelic drug "good stuff, not ... crap." She
did not deny the remarks yesterday, saying "I was a street kid. I
never hid that fact."

The statement from the Liberals, who have stepped up their campaign
to keep the riding in party hands after Gerard Kennedy resigned to
run for the federal leadership, says "voters have a right to know how
her values will affect her ability to represent this riding." DiNovo
called the statement a double standard and "a last desperate attempt"
by Liberals to stave off an embarrassing defeat in the riding for
candidate Sylvia Watson, a city councillor.

"When George Smitherman admits to taking drugs he's hailed as a hero
by (Premier) Dalton McGuinty," said DiNovo, 56.

"I pulled myself up and got myself back to university and
accomplished a successful career in business and in the ministry."
Smitherman revealed in May that he spent five years fighting -- and
finally beating -- an addiction to illegal street stimulants used as
"party drugs" on the gay scene in the early to mid 1990s after his
father died. The revelation took McGuinty by surprise, but he did not
hold it against his health minister.

"I hope that he will serve as an inspiration to others in Ontario and
wherever else who find themselves in a grip of a drug addiction,"
McGuinty told reporters at the time.

Allegations of dirty tricks in the campaign shadowed the premier
yesterday at an announcement in Mississauga of $109 million to
further improve medical wait times in the province.

McGuinty ignored calls from NDP Leader Howard Hampton to censure
Liberal activists who on Monday distributed comments from DiNovo
lamenting the media frenzy around freed child killer Karla Homolka.
"The Liberal party has gone into the gutter," Hampton said in a
statement, adding the remarks comparing Homolka's treatment to the
persecution of Jesus Christ were taken out of context. McGuinty said
he had nothing to do with the Homolka remarks excerpted from a DiNovo
sermon last October.

Liberals have campaigned feverishly in the riding in recent days,
with Kennedy and leadership rival Bob Rae greeting commuters with
Watson at the Keele subway station yesterday morning. On Monday, 11
cabinet ministers went on a door-knocking blitz.

"The government is in full disaster mode," said Conservative Leader
John Tory, whose party is running former city councillor David Hutcheon.