Vancouver Observer Gives Intimate Look Into Conservative Suppression Tactics

Orwell had never been Robocalled

Emma Pullman, Director of Research at Leadnow.ca, has published an article in the Vancouver Observer that promises to blow the deflections of the Conservative Party of Canada (RE Robocalls) completely out of the water.

In her article she writes about John Fryer, Professor of Labour Economics at UVic and Member of the Order of Canada. John Fryer, you see, attended training sessions offered by the Manning Center for Democracy (the latter part of the name is about to be completely discounted) and specifically was disturbed during a question and answer session run by Conservative insiders Richard Ciano and Nick Kouvalis (Ciano and Kouvalis were both founding members of Campaign Research, the group currently under investigation for calls made to constituents falsely claiming MP Irwin Cotler was resigning from his seat).

From Pullmans article:

In a question and answer session, attendees discussed voter suppression tactics. They talked about posing as a member of another party, and about making rude calls at inconvenient times as a strategy to get the supporter of another party to not go out and vote for their candidate. The instructors detailed different kinds of suppression calls, and how these tactics are borrowed from the U.S. Republican Party.

According to Fryer, “the mood of the meeting was that this is war and that anything goes.”

Fryer points out that robocalls were just one portion of the two day, $249 training program. Every attendee left with Ciano’s business card. The following election of 2011 (this training session was held in January of 2010) saw the Conservatives win an majority and also say Campaign Research make out like bandits. They raked in nearly $400,000 dollars from work in 39 ridings, 10 ridings of which have been reported to have incidence of fraud (for now).

Pullman goes further in her article to detail how much specific Conservative MP’s gave to Campaign Research:

Dean Del Mastro, MP for Peterborough paid Campaign Research $22,120.60
Peter Braid, the MP for Kitchener-Waterloo, paid $19,120.00
Kellie Leitch from Simcoe-Grey paid a total of $21,315.19
Deborah Meredith paid $13,582.85
Troy DeSouza paid Campaign Research a total $8,144

The two calling companies that are under investigation for the Robocall scandal are Racknine Inc. and Responsive Marketing Group. The probe has not yet netted Campaign Research but it’s likely a matter of time.

It should be noted that since John Fryer submitted his letter to the editor, which you can read here, Campaign Research has stated that Ciano worked for the Manning Center, not campaign research, and that no instruction on Robocalls was provided.

Given the choice between a company that is currently being investigated for electoral misdeeds and a Member of the Order of Canada/Labour Economics professor, I’m sticking with the latter.