Enbridge hearings hit with Snuffaluffagus hoax

Two Brazilians who have never even heard of the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway tarsands-to-tankers pipeline appear to have been signed up as applicants to speak at the hearings. A Calgary Herald editor confirmed their applications were fake by simply pulling their names off the National Energy Board list, phoning them up in Brazil, and asking them.

And right about now I'm guessing you're remembering Kory Teneycke and the Snuffaluffagus hoax.

On Sept 3 2010, former Harper director of communications Kory Teneycke was striving to get his dream of a Fox News North up and running in Canada just as a Stop Fox News North petition from Avaaz was circulating.

"It is safe to assume many, if not most, are Americans" 

he wrote in an op ed slamming the petition that day, sounding eerily similar to Joe Oliver this week.
And not only that, he said, but they were fake names : Snuffaluffagus and Homer Simpson were signatories to the Avaaz petition along with real people who had not signed it, including Andrew Coyne, Paul Wells, and Kady O'Malley. 


Kady was immediately suspicious :

okay, this is weird. how did @KoryTeneycke get a list of *fake* (not fraudulent) sigs on a list that isn't available online?

Teneycke then revealed that he had been contacted with the list of fake names by the prankster who had added them. When Kady told him of her displeasure at being included, Teneycke said his "source" told him he had not added the journalists' names.


Avaaz was understandably livid at this first ever spamming of one of their petitions and filed a complaint with the RCMP and the Ottawa police to investigate the source behind the single IP address from which they had all apparently originated. Although police declined to investigate, Teneycke resigned from Sun TV the next day. for three months before returning as VP in January.


Flash forward to the The Calgary Herald yesterday, who were questioning environmental groups about the two fake Brazilian sign ups :

Unfortunately, after just one day of searching, finding two people who were signed up against their knowledge indicates that at least some people are not interested in acting ethically or hearing the science and the facts. They simply want to mess with the process and throw a wrench into the gears.

Well I certainly agree with that assessment although I don't see any particular advantage to the environmental groups to falsely add the names of people who are never going to testify. This isn't a petition.
No, I think it would more likely be perpetrated by someone seeking to undermine the very legitimacy of the public hearing process itself. Back to the Calgary Herald :

Clearly, the National Energy board and the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency have not done a very good job of ensuring the legitimacy of the process.

It's the Snuffaluffagus hoax all over again.
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Update : Big City Lib! Go! Now!
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Canadian media : It can't happen here.

We're getting a lot of stories from our media who are at pains to assure us a Canadian equivalent to the Rupert Murdoch scandal of cozy incestuous relationships with British politicians and illegal phone hacking/dirty tricks couldn't possibly happen here in Canada.

Really? No cozy incestuous relationships? No dirty tricks?

On March 30, 2009, Stephen Harper, PMO staffer Kory Teneycke, Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, and Roger Ailes, president of Fox News and former communications adviser to Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr., all sat down to lunch.

We know this because it showed up in the mandatory disclosures media consultant and former White House flack Ari Fleischer made to the U.S. Justice Department. Ari, you will recall, had a personal contract with Steve to grease US media wheels for him. Teneycke had a dream of a Canadian Fox news channel.

Four months later, Teneycke had left the PMO - barely a year into his job as Harper's chief spokesman - only to pick up a contract with Quebecor to explore a project that Ottawa insiders almost immediately described as a fledgling "Fox News North."

Three more PMO staffers followed Teneyke to SunMedia : an issues management adviser, an advertising manager, and an issues management researcher, described as "a guy who could dig up any dirt on the opposition in a jiffy".

Teneycke himself had to take a brief three and half month leave from heading his new project after conflict-of-interest embarrassments ramped up following his Sun op-ed and public admission to prior knowledge of the hacking of an Avaaz petition hostile to his setting up of a Fox News North in Canada.

Teneycke was back in the Sun saddle during Steve's re-election campaign in April this year when a fifth former PMO staffer, Harper's former deputy chief of staff Patrick Muttart, sent him a photo of an Ignatieff look-alike posing in full combat gear in Kuwait in 2002.
"Ignatieff linked to Iraq war planning" ran the SunMedia headline and story, sans photo, before Teneycke apparently tumbled to the ruse.

Patrick Muttart was working for the Con election war room at the time, while simultaneously heading the "Canada/US practice" at the US PR firm Mercury Public Affairs, where he works under Terry Nelson. Nelson, former political director of the 2004 Bush Cheney campaign and McCain-Palin campaign manager, now a Senior Advisor to teabagger and 2012 presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, is famous for the race-baiting campaign ads and phonejamming dirty tricks done under his GOP watch, and for employing the media advisor on the original Swiftboat Veterans For Truth ads which used lies and doctored photos to smear John Kerry's war record during his run for US president.

Amusingly, the CTV piece, Harper immune from Murdoch-style scandal, makes extensive use of analysis from Muttart to assure us a similar scandal could not happen here. We just don't have the same "intense, quasi-incestuous" clique of political and media elites, Muttart says without irony.
Besides, another Harper former chief of staff, Ian Brodie, explains about Canadian papers: "so few people actually read most of them."

Yet somehow the rightwing National Post muddles on for 13 years losing $9-million a year, no one seems to know who owns CanWest/PostMedia now besides it being some US hedge fund and so much for the rule limiting foreign media ownership to a third, and 99% of the papers which endorsed a candidate in the last election all endorsed Steve.

We could have a Murdoch-style scandal here and it would be out of the news cycle again the same week, no damage done.

Update : More from David Climenhaga at Rabble
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Canadian farmland vs American hedge fund

Local farmers 120km northwest of Toronto have four days left to win their battle to keep farmland and fresh water headlands from disappearing into a US hedge fund's limestone mega-quarry.

If only 3% of  land in Ontario is suitable for agriculture, why should any of it be lost to an open pit mine deeper than Niagara Falls to benefit US investors who acquired the land by passing themselves off as farmers ?


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Laura K provides action links and the history leading to the July 10 deadline for the project's approval.
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Avaaz has a petition to Minister of Natural Resources Linda Jeffrey. Please sign and pass it on.

Locals resisting the quarry certainly have their work cut out for them.
A good local article : High Stakes in the High Country lays out the opposition

The public face of Highland Companies in Melancthon Township is Michael Daniher of the PR firm Special Situations Inc.

"Daniher’s business partner is Paul Curley, a former advisor to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and other Progressive Conservative party leaders. He shares an office with two other agencies, Counsel Public Relations and Counsel Public Affairs. The latter’s president, Philip Dewan, previously the most senior political advisor to Premier Dalton McGuinty, is one of two lobbyists registered to work at Queen’s Park on behalf of The Highland Companies on issues of “agriculture, economic development and trade, energy, environment, transportation and natural resources.”

NDACT, a local group opposed to the quarry, lobbied to have the agricultural land protected as "specialty cropland".

"When the specialty crop designation somewhat curiously failed to win the support of the Ontario Potato Board, NDACT members noted that Bruce Wilson, Highland’s vice-president of farm operations, is one of the board’s directors."

Today's Orangeville Citizen : Highland remains confident in bid for new quarry

In spite of the Ministry of Environment’s (MoE) criticism of The Highland Companies quarry application, the company remains confident that the application will succeed.

and from Orangeville.com :

The company’s spokesperson, Lindsay Broadhead, [note : of Hill and Knowlton] said they are aware of the public’s concerns regarding the quarry’s impact on local culture .

“It is important to reiterate that this process is not over. We welcome public scrutiny and feedback on the company’s plan including suggestions about how cultural and heritage concerns can be addressed ...”

she said, without mentioning the 30 heritage homes and farms already bulldozed by her employer. That flattened expanse in the top video? That's them. 
 
h/t West End Bob

Monday update : media coverage ;
 Global : Thousands of Canadians rally to stop mega-quarry. Good article.
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Kory, the NRA, and the long gun registry vote

Photoshop inspired by Steve Harpo : "From my clammy pudgy hands"

(h/t Antonia Z)

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Here's Steve's former communications director Kory Teneycke on CBC's Power and Politics, Sept 3, 2010 (Time mark : 6:50), comparing the Avaaz petition against a must-carry licence for Teneycke's Fox News North to a 'hypothetical' case of the NRA meddling in Canadian politics :

"We're having a debate on gun control right now in Canada on the long gun registry, a very hot debate. What if the NRA came into Canada with petitions and advertising campaigns, trying to influence Canadian policy and Canadian decisions? People would be outraged. People. would. be. outraged."

OK, Kory, let's go with that.

From the NRA website : Standing Guard by Wayne LaPierre, NRA Executive VP :

"If all goes well in the Canadian parliament, Dominion gun owners will be freed from 14 years of living under the crushing weight of a bureaucratic, scandal-ridden, wasteful, invasive, $2 billion, error-ridden and inarguably worthless long gun registry."
"The NRA of America supports and endorses the work done by the CILA [Canadian Institute for Legislative Action] and strongly encourages all Canadian firearms owners to become CILA supporting members."

Tony Bernardo, head of CILA :

"We have been working hand in hand with the NRA regarding international issues for the past three and a half years...in fact, the NRA was instrumental in the formation of CILA…the NRA provides CILA with tremendous amounts of logistic support."

Foreign Policy, July 2006 :

In December, an NRA official was scheduled to offer a "legislative training workshop" at the annual meeting of CILA's parent organization.
"How do we protect our rights?" went the promo for the event. "By being more politically active and effective at the grassroots [level]. And who better to show us how than the most powerful lobby group in the world, the National Rifle Association and their Institute for Legislative Action."

CBC, today : NRA involved in long gun registry debate

Bernardo, a frequent guest on NRA chat shows updating U.S. gun owners on the fight to kill the Canadian registry, said the NRA was instrumental in helping him set up his Canadian lobby group, CILA, the lobbying arm of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association (CSSA), and a mirror group of the Institute for Legislative Action, the NRA's lobbying arm.

The CSSA's communications director, Brant Scott, was previously an aide to Con MP Garry Breitkreuz, featured here on the NRA website.

CSSA media release, June 8, 2010:

"While Brant was working with Garry Breitkreuz, he acted as liaison with the CSSA on a variety of gun-related issues, including the long-gun registry. The CSSA worked with the MP's office on Bill C-301 and later Bill C-391," explains Bernardo."

Garry Breitkreuz is chair of Canada's parliamentary Public Safety and National Security Committee.

Back to the CBC :

Michael Bryant, formerly Ontario's attorney general, said the NRA has been agitating in Canadian political backrooms for years.
Canadians need to know the role the NRA has played in the gun registry debate, Bryant said.

"For a lot of people in Canada, if they knew that the NRA was part of the effort to get rid of the gun registry, they would think more about their views," he said.
"And they would think, 'well, wait a minute, I thought this was about, you know, wasting taxpayer dollars. The NRA's involved? Really? That makes me very uncomfortable … ' "

So. "Uncomfortable" or "outraged"? Your call, Kory.

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G&M tonight : Tories deny NRA 'conspiracy theory'

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Yep, I'll bet you're really really sorry now you reminded us of the NRA's reach into Canada, what with the Cons precious, the long gun registry vote, coming up on Sept 21st and all.

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h/t Dammit Janet

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