A piece of the controversial list.

TORONTO • Tom Long's campaign for the Canadian Alliance Leadership has denounced a Toronto Star article that alleges the National Post donated its subscription list to the campaign's telemarketing effort to sign-up new Alliance members. "This is the latest example of the Star using shoddy and biased reporting in a pathetic attempt to fabricate some kind of silly 'list-gate' scandal that does not exist," said campaign spokesperson Ig Noble hotly.

"In fact, we paid through the nose for the 189,000 names on that National Post subscriber list-- at least $30,000," asserted Noble. He added it was their policy not to comment on campaign donations, so he would neither confirm or deny any rumour of an anonymous $30,000 dollar donation arriving in a black suitcase with the list delivered by Hollinger executive Peter White.

The Long camp has also been the target of unsubstantiated innuendo that they improperly obtained Ontario provincial Conservative party membership lists. "I AM the Ontario Conservative party," said former party president and strategist Tom Long, "so any smear campaign implying that I had to improperly obtain these lists is ludicrous and defamatory."

"Sure, Mike told the riding associations not to give out the list, but that was so no one else could get it," Long explained.

Noble claimed that "the whole subscription list incident is a non-issue because we have already returned the list and not, as some people have implied, because of a faux controversy created by the Star article."

"We returned it and demanded our money back because it's completely useless. We phoned the first 20,000 phone numbers on the list and only could find three bona fide subscribers. Ten per cent were bogus names or numbers, twenty-five per cent had inadvertently received a free subscription when buying another item such as a pack of gum, ten per cent said they thought they were sending away for postage stamps, twenty per cent said someone else had signed them up as a prank to annoy them, fifteen per cent couldn't speak, nevermind read English, and twenty percent of the people on the list had never even heard of the National Post," Noble enumerated.

When her figures were challenged, Noble said they found pets, cartoon characters, whole families and even entire towns that were all supposedly subscribers.

"Hey, they've ADMITTED to giving away 45,000 copies a day so you shouldn't so be surprised," Noble heckled, "one guy said he signed up for 75 free subscriptions just to get cheap fuel for his fireplace."