Liberal Party members cry foul after early email from leadership hopeful

Andrew Furey hasn't officially launched his campaign for the leadership of the Liberal party, but already some members are wondering how his campaign got their personal information.

Over the weekend an email went out to invite supporters to a "very special announcement" at an event Tuesday evening,

Rudy Norman was surprised, because he had never signed up to receive anything from Furey.

He signed up to support Paul Antle in the 2013 race and is used to receiving an occasional email from the party, but now he wants to know how Furey ended up with his email address.

Norman is also the current president of the NL Alliance, a grassroots political party headed by Graydon Pelley. 

"How in the world did he get it?" said Norman in a CBC News interview. 

John Hogan, who's managing Furey's campaign, says the list didn't come from the party, 

"Dr. Furey's campaign team has been working hard with many volunteers across the province," he said in a written statement to CBC News.

"With the help of volunteer information, publicly available information, social media, etc., the campaign team established a mail-out list."

Furey has long been involved behind the scenes, helping to run the most recent election campaigns provincially and federally.

The Liberal Party insists it hasn't given a copy out to anyone.

"There was no unauthorized access or exporting of the Liberal Party of N.L.'s global list of members/supporters during the 2020 leadership election," said the party's executive director, Michael King.

Norman wasn't the only one to raise concerns, with other party members on Twitter wondering how their email addresses ended up with the Furey campaign.

Once a candidate is approved by the party and pays the entry fee it will be given access to party membership lists, but Furey hasn't even announced he's running yet.

Norman said the explanation from Furey's team just adds to his concern, meaning volunteers are hanging on to personal contact information.

"This just basically confirms that the party is giving out this private information to volunteers and those volunteers are hanging on to that information for whoever knows how long and they're disseminating this information."

Furey tweeted an apology Monday afternoon, saying anyone who doesn't want to receive more emails can opt out.

When people click on the email to find out how they got on the list they're told, "You are receiving this email because you opted in via our website."

Furey's campaign doesn't have a website set up yet.

Personal information stored by political parties isn't covered under the Access to Information and Privacy Protection Act, the way government information is, so the information and privacy commissioner wouldn't be able to investigate, even if someone complained.

Last year commissioners across the country raised concerns about the lack of oversight, calling on governments to close the loophole.

Leadership candidate John Abbott is calling for an investigation into the emails.

"In the interest of ensuring a fair leadership selection process, we need a full investigation to determine if Andrew Furey's campaign had access to and used any Liberal list, gotten either from the party or someone else," says Abbott in a letter Monday to party president John Allan.

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