Open this photo in gallery: Liberal Leader Mark Carney makes an announcement at Bombardier during a campaign stop in Dorval, Que., on April 14.Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press Liberal Leader Mark Carney made absolutely clear Monday morning: dirty tricks will not be tolerated in his campaign. Sorry, wait, that should be: they will not just be tolerated – they will also be minimized and excused. The Liberal Party apparatus first signalled as much when, after a CBC News report that Liberal staffers planted phony buttons at a conservative event last week, it released a statement saying its staffers merely “got carried away.” Mr. Carney drove that point home when he announced that the guilty parties would be reassigned within his campaign. This is a slap on the wrist that, in practice, actually feels more like a hot oil massage and cuticle treatment. This all started last week when members of the party of positive politics decided to take a break from warning about the dangers of disinformation to create some of its own. As CBC News reported Sunday, a couple of Liberal operatives attended the Canada Strong and Free Networking (CSFN) Conference, a gathering to talk conservative policy in Canada, and planted buttons ostensibly to make attendees look as though they endorsed their messages. One button featured the slogan “Stop the Steal,” an obvious reference to the denial of the 2020 election results by U.S. President Donald Trump, and which was clearly conceived to amplify comparisons between Mr. Trump and Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre. Another button featured Conservative campaign director Jenni Byrne’s name crossed out and replaced with that of longtime Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke, who has criticized Mr. Poilievre’s campaign team for squandering a 25-point lead. That button seems to have been intended to exploit divisions that have emerged within the party during this campaign. A reporter for CBC News learned that two staffers had planted the bogus buttons after overhearing them discuss the gambit at a pub near Parliament Hill. That was a terribly novice mistake by those two staffers; everyone knows that if you’re going to discuss sensitive internal party matters within earshot of a journalist, you do it in a train station – not in a bar. In any case, the news of this story should have resulted in an easy cull by Mr. Carney: Take the sick and wounded out behind the barn and do away with them before they can infect the rest of the herd. But Mr. Carney said these staffers will simply be “reassigned.” It’s the same mistake he made with Paul Chiang, the Liberal candidate for Markham-Unionville who suggested constituents turn his political opponent over to the Chinese consulate for a bounty. Mr. Carney called Mr. Chiang’s actions unacceptable, but then decided to keep him around (though Mr. Chiang eventually stepped aside). If getting caught planting buttons to make your opponents look like deranged Trumpists and/or calling for your opponent to be kidnapped by a hostile regime doesn’t get you kicked out of the party, what does? (This is a rhetorical question – we all know the answer is insubordination.) The only conceivable reason not to kick out the individuals caught performing this cynical act of disinformation is that their actions were expressly condoned by those higher up in the campaign. That would explain the rather cavalier attitude that oozed from the Liberal Party’s initial statement on the matter, in which it claimed that it is running a “positive campaign” and suggested that Liberal staffers were just “poking fun” at reports of Conservative infighting. For those who have been around Ottawa long enough, it’s not terribly surprising that political campaigns will resort to these dirty tricks, but it is surprising that the Leader’s response is simply to shuffle these staffers from the department of dirty tricks to the false flags war room, all within the same campaign. This might seem like a rather trivial matter considering the far more important issues confronting Canadians this election. And it mostly is. In fact, this should have been a one-day story. But Mr. Carney’s decision to keep the offending staffers around suggests this was more than just a couple of young guys going rogue, and it tells Canadians that old poisons are still circulating in the Liberal war room, even if the new guy is in charge now. It also undermines Mr. Carney’s image as the serious option – the adult in the room – who is supposed to be running a campaign focused on issues while the other guy boasts about the size of his rallies. Instead, he’s tacitly endorsing shady, juvenile tricks, while claiming to be above the fray. If these actions were truly unacceptable, the individuals responsible would no longer be on the Liberal campaign. Instead, they’ve been shuffled elsewhere – perhaps to the fake T-shirt-making room, or the online troll department – which tells us all we need to know about which behaviours “the adult in the room” will tolerate.