Former Edmonton Liberal candidate receives cease and desist order from party over signs

The Liberal Party of Canada has sent a cease-and-desist order to independent candidate Rod Loyola about his campaign signs.

The Liberal Party of Canada has sent a cease and desist notice to one of its former Edmonton candidates.

Rod Loyola is running in the Edmonton-Gateway riding as an independent candidate after being dropped by the Liberal party and replaced by Jeremy Hoefsloot.

Loyola’s campaign signs may leave some confused about his party status, though.

Signs posted along 19 Avenue N.W. for Loyola appear to be Liberal signs with the branding covered up.

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“The Liberal Party of Canada has sent an official notice to Rod Loyola, an Independent Candidate for Edmonton-Gateway, requesting that he immediately cease using LPC branding,” Quinton Graham-Bennett of the Liberal Party said in an email to CTV News Edmonton on Thursday.

“This action comes in response to signs he has displayed in the Edmonton-Gateway area, which feature LPC branding without authorization and may create confusion for voters. “Furthermore, we have lodged a complaint with the Commissioner of Canada Elections regarding his use of LPC-branded signs.”

For his part, Loyola insists there are no brand violations.

“I’m not too sure what the Liberal Party is talking about, because when you look at my signs, clearly there is no Liberal branding,” Loyola told CTV News Edmonton on Thursday.

“They do not own the colour red. They don’t own the font style in which my own name is written in, and my signs clearly say independent on them.”

He said one of the most-expensive purchases a political candidate makes in an election campaign is signage. “It was close to about $4,000 that we ended up spending while I was still the Liberal candidate, so it made sense to us that we would just cover all the Liberal branding on the signs and make sure that they clearly identified me as (an) independent.”

Loyola stepped down as the NDP MLA for Edmonton-Ellerslie on March 25.

Four days later, he launched a campaign to be the Liberal MP for the newly formed Edmonton-Gateway riding, only to be dropped as a candidate by the party on April 4.

No reason for the decision has been made public, but the move came after a video from 2009 emerged of Loyola sympathizing with Hezbollah and Hamas.

Canada listed both groups as terrorist organizations years before Loyola’s statements.

With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Galen McDougall