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Empresas y finanzas

Another Canadian Conservative candidate removed from campaign


    NORTH VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - A Canadian Conservative candidate who made sexually explicit and racist comments on social media has been removed from the party's lineup, the latest candidate to get dumped by one of the three major parties ahead of the election.

    Blair Dale, who was vying for a Newfoundland district in the Oct. 19 vote, was pulled from the campaign on Tuesday morning, Conservative spokesman Kory Teneycke told reporters travelling with Prime Minister Stephen Harper's campaign.

    The move comes after a blogger posted a series of online comments Dale made about women and ethnic minorities on various social media platforms, including a dating site and Facebook.

    Harper's right-leaning Conservatives, who have ruled the country for nearly a decade, are in a tight three-way race with the centre-left Liberals and New Democratic Party.

    All three parties have dismissed candidates during the campaign, often after it was discovered they made embarrassing or offensive statements on social media, sometimes years before they sought political office.

    The Conservatives have been hit by more departures than the Liberals or NDP, and hold the honour of the most ignominious exit, by a candidate who - in his former life as a service technician - was caught on a hidden camera urinating into a coffee mug during a house call to repair a leaky sink in 2012.

    (Reporting by Julie Gordon in North Vancouver and Andrea Hopkins in Toronto; Editing by Christian Plumb)