Nine days after the Liberals were defeated last year and Paul Martin announced he was stepping aside as party leader, Stephane Dion had a $200,000 loan from Montreal constituent Mamdouh Stefanos in the bag. "I volunteered," says Stefanos. "I told him, 'Whatever you need, you can have it from me.'" Dion would borrow another $150,000 from him for his leadership campaign, making Stefanos the biggest of eight lenders to what was then a long-shot candidate to replace Martin. Mamdouh Stefanos is the largest lender to Stephane Dion's Liberal leadership campaign.
But when Stefanos's name was disclosed to Elections Canada, the Liberal documents erroneously spelled it "Stephanos," and prompted a question that lingers on political blog sites: "Who is Mamdouh Stephanos?" The Egyptian-born investor is a 50-year-old family man with a low profile and a generous streak. "I invest and when I win, I give," he said in an interview. "I keep what I need, that's all." Stefanos also shrugs off rumours he has close contact with one of Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi's sons, Saif al-Islam Gadhafi, an artist who runs a charity and is considered heir apparent to the presidency. Stefanos said he has never met the son personally but has, along with other Canadian business people, attempted to foster trade links with Libya after then-prime minister Martin's visit to Gadhafi in 2004. Martin was among a string of foreign leaders who visited Libya when Gadhafi's relations with the West thawed after he renounced terrorism and his chemical weapons program.
The Liberal Party of Canada is committed to the view that the dignity of each individual man and woman is the cardinal principle of democratic society and the primary purpose of all political organization and activity in such a society.
The Liberal Party of Canada is dedicated to the principles that have historically sustained the Party: individual freedom, responsibility and human dignity in the framework of a just society, and political freedom in the framework of meaningful
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