KINGSTON—Liberals will soon be getting clear, good-behaviour rules for candidates and their teams, leader Justin Trudeau is promising.

Trudeau is vowing “more clarity” after blocking former candidate Christine Innes from running in the Trinity—Spadina byelection — punishment for what he says was unacceptable behaviour by her campaign team.

“The way a campaign team behaves reflects directly on the candidate and that’s part of the issue,” Trudeau told reporters after a speech in Kingston Tuesday. “The national board and the Liberal party will be bringing forward more clarity on that in the coming days.”

And Trudeau wants other Liberals to see what happened to Innes as a warning.

“The infighting, the backroom games, are not something that Canadians want to see,” he said.

“Canadians are tired of politicians that are not focused on serving and are focused instead on winning. We need to build a team that is serving Canadians in the best possible way and not fighting with each other.”

The bid to crack down on infighting, nonetheless, has stirred up some internal Liberal battles in recent days.

Trudeau has been accused of breaking his promise for open nominations with the ouster of Innes, with critics saying that her real offence was getting in the way of larger plans for the Toronto ridings after boundaries are shuffled for 2015.

One would-be candidate, Zach Paikin, announced this week he was abandoning his bid for a seat in the Hamilton area in protest over how Innes had been treated and what he alleged was a broken promise by Trudeau.

But the Liberal leader, in one of his first public appearances since taking time off for the birth of his third child three weeks ago, rejects the charge.

“Open nominations, which I’m committed to . . . (are) about letting local Liberals choose who is going to be their candidate in the next election. That is what open nominations are all about,” he said.

“It doesn’t mean that anyone can behave in any particular way they like and still expect to be able to become Liberal candidates.”

Trinity—Spadina became vacant last week when NDP MP Olivia Chow stepped down to run for mayor of Toronto. Innes, the wife of the former cabinet minister and MP for the riding, Tony Ianno, immediately unveiled her candidacy for the Liberal nomination, complete with a website.

But a Thursday letter from Innes to Ontario campaign co-chair David MacNaughton said that the two-time candidate for Trinity—Spadina was being blocked from running in the byelection because her campaign had been involved in unacceptable activities, running down other candidates (specifically new Toronto Centre MP Chrystia Freeland.)

Innes called those allegations “baseless,” and said she was being punished because Trudeau and his team had their eyes on the 2015 election, when most of Trinity—Spadina will be folded into two new ridings: University-Rosedale and Fort York-Spadina. The byelection, in effect, produces a job for year for the winning candidate, who will then have to move to another riding in 2015.

The dispute, Innes said in a letter to supporters, came down to an argument over who would run in the more Liberal-friendly riding of University-Rosedale in 2015.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Trudeau also rejected that interpretation of the controversy on Tuesday, and said he has no preferred candidate to run in the Trinity—Spadina byelection. In fact, he said, the contest is now more open, now that steps have been taken to stop the antics there.

“There were no other candidates willing to go near Trinity—Spadina, given the approach that this particular team did, so we’re glad to see there is actually going to be an open nomination now in Trinity Spadina,” Trudeau said.

Read more about: