Christy Clark and the Manning Centre for Building Conservatives

In March 2012, Christy Clark gave the opening remarks to the Ottawa Manning Centre Networking Conference, the yearly "conservative family reunion".

She was introduced by her then chief of staff, former senior Harper advisor, Enbridge lobbyist, and Alberta 'firewall manifesto' signatory Ken Boessenkool, who was her very first campaign manager back in 2010. 

"We have a duty to Canada" to easy the flow of products to Asia, she told her audience at the Manning Centre [a year ago]. "We support pipelines in British Columbia."

BC Conservative leader John Cummins was not invited.

Manning has in the past said he doesn’t support the political ambitions of Cummins, who was elected as a Reformer with Manning in the 1993 election, because vote-splitting on the centre-right always makes it easier for the NDP to assume power.

One-time Harper government cabinet minister, Jay Hill, also said Friday he’s backing Clark’s leadership. “I’ll do whatever I can to support her and support the B.C. Liberals."

Preston Manning, founder of the Reform Party and President of the Manning Centre, is also a senior fellow at the Koch-funded Fraser Institute.

Jay Hill was in charge of the Cons 200 page dirty tricks manual on how to disrupt and stonewall parliamentary committees back in 2007.

Also helping Christy's campaign was Chuck Strahl, former BC Reform and Con MP, now chair of the Manning Centre and chair of CSIS watchdog the Security Intelligence Review Committee since last June, at which time he had to give up working for Christy.

The only pollster to accurately predict Tuesday's election result was Christy's principal secretary and ADM in charge of "Intergovernmental Relations" till a year ago and now on contract to Christy, former Reform and Republican policy advisor Dimitri Pantazopoulos.

Premier’s Office targeted crucial election ridings for the B.C. Liberals — all on government time and your dime

"Premier Christy Clark’s former principal secretary, Dimitri Pantazopolous, and former deputy chief of staff Kim Haakstad were among those involved in a comprehensive strategy that used government staff and resources to try to win swing ridings for the BC Liberals ...  serious misconduct by government employees and misuse of government funds.   

“Dimitri was the driving force behind the swing teams, from its inception through to the operational phase."

Pantazoploulos also runs the Manning Centre Municipal Governance Project and is mentioned by Calgary developer Cal Wenzel in the now infamous cel vid about buying the campaigns of developer-friendly municipal candidates in order to defeat Calgary Mayor Nenshi.

On Ken Boessenkool's twitter account at Kool, Topp, & Guy Public Affairs - the political consultancy firm formed in February - Christy's former chief of staff Ken Boessenkool and Christy's election advisor Don Guy are busy congratulating Nick Kouvalis of Campaign Research on Christy Clark's federal ConservaLiberal campaign win.  
The third partner in the firm is BC NDP campaign director Brian Topp.

and a quick tweet from Rob Ford's chief of staff Mark Towhey:

You do remember Nick Kouvalis from Campaign Research,  don't you ? 

In addition to being Rob Ford's election architect, Kouvalis is a regular speaker at ... wait for it ... the Manning Centre yearly bunfest.

Fun fact :  Founding directors of the Manning Centre for Building Democracy :

• Nigel Wright, Harper's chief of staff, currently in the news for cutting Con senator Mike Duffy a $90,000 personal cheque to cover money the Duffster owed to the Senate for inappropriately claimed living expenses for the past four years while Duffy was being investigated for it,  and 
• Gwyn Morgan, Chairman of the Board of SNC Lavalin til May 2 this year, the company being investigated for fraud in four countries on three continents, was Steve's choice for heading up his brand new Accountability commission in 2006.

Manning Centre : "Congratulations to Christy Clark on a spectacular victory. The election of a non-socialist government in BC is in the best interests of BC and Canada."
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Tracking the BC ConservaLiberals

Dave and RossK are tracking the incestuous links between the federal Cons and the BC provincial Libs.

Dave traces the Vancouver web development company Backbone Technology setting up websites for the federal Cons in 2004, the Olympics, the BC Libs and the BC government, and scoring a secret bid on the BC HST info site. Handy, that.
RossK is looking at the possibility the BC Libs are a mere subsidiary of the FedCons and asks "Who was the first FedCon operative hired by Christy Clark?", noting a DComm left Steve to reappear in Christy's government 3 months later in July 2011.


So who was the first BC FedConLib? Here's one from April 2011.
Dimitri Pantazopoulos became Christie Clark's principal secretary on April 4, 2011, in charge of "Long-term policy and priorities and Intergovernmental Relations" after doing polling and voter tracking for her BC Liberal leadership race.
A former Reform Party policy advisor, he was introduced to Clark four months earlier by another Reform Party policy advisor and Harper strategist Ken Boessenkool, who quit as Clark's campaign manager after Steve asked senior members from the national Con campaign team to "refrain from taking formal positions in the B.C. leadership race".
Boessenkool, a former Enbridge lobbyist, eventually joined Clark's team as her chief of staff last month.

 Clark explains :

"The role of the principal secretary is a policy adviser, helping us navigate some of the policy waters that sometimes can get difficult -thinking about the long-term vision for government, helping set some of that agenda," she said.

Prior to becoming Clark's principal secretary, Pantazopoulos was founder and president of Praxicus Public Strategies for 11 years, where he led public opinion research as Steve's official "Pollster of Record", and more recently polled for TO Mayor Rob Ford. And previous to that :

Mr. Pantazopoulos served as a Washington, (D.C.) Partner with Market Strategies, Inc., an influential Republican public opinion research and consulting firm based in Livonia, Michigan. 

Surprising how often, no matter where you start with these guys, it leads back to Republican flacksters.


Christy Clark's latest Harper acquisition is recent PMO press secretary Sara MacIntyre, who introduced Steve's inimitable media-repression tactics to BC this month with her appointment as Clark's media handler less than one month after leaving Steve's employ.

“She's taken the Harper media plan and brought it to B.C.” said CTV's Robert Fife.

Go, Reform.
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Excited delirium 'R Us.ca

Ken Boessenkool, original signatory to the 2001 'Alberta Firewall' letter and former Alliance campaign advisor to both Harper and Stockwell Day, has added TASER™ International to his lobbying portfolio.

According to the Gov. of Canada Lobbyist Registration System, his job for TASER™ will be to lobby the Prime Minister's Office, the Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada (PSEPC), and the RCMP with an "Awareness campaign to educate decision-makers on the facts of TASER International's products" for "Government reviews of taser use by law enforcement".

One of the "Techniques of communication that you have used or expect to use in the course of the undertaking" listed on Ken's TASER™ page at the same government lobbyist website is "Grass-roots Communications"

LOL, as the kids say.

Previous "grass-roots communications" by Ken Boessenkool's firm, Hill and Knowlton Canada, have been "getitrightalberta.ca", a grass-roots effort to convince Albertans they really don't want to benefit personally from $2B+ in tarsands revenue after all, and the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, another grassroots org famous for shilling for ethanol for agri-biz firms.

Based on past performance, we now eagerly await new TASER™ grassroots websites like tasersaveslives.ca, exciteddelirium'r us.ca and onemilliontasered.ca.

Possibly, onemillionserved.ca would be pushing it.

Former advisor to Harper and Day lobbies for Taser Int - a very good article from Sue Bailey at Canadian Press re the revolving door of gov/industry lobbying and Boessenkool's work for Merck Frosst, which benefited from a surprise $300-million fund in the last federal budget to vaccinate girls against cervical cancer.

getitrightorelsealberta.ca

That's : GetItRightOrElseAlberta.ca

From Daveberta :
"Over the past week, a new website has popped up - getitrightalberta.ca - calling for Alberta's Tory Government to keep the resource royalty structure the way it is - even after the damning Alberta Royalty Review Report and Auditor General's Report slammed Ed Stelmach's Tory Government for failing to collect BILLIONS of dollars in resource revenues owed to Albertans over the past 15 years."

Daveberta looked into who is behind getitrightalberta.ca and came up with Hill and Knowlton.
The H&K Calgary office, Dave informs us, is "led by none-other than Mr. Ken Boessenkool, a member of the infamous firewall six and former adviser to Stockwell Day and Stephen Harper."
Pretty slick site for a grass roots effort -
Get It Right Alberta! About this site :

"Concerned Albertans, including private citizens, small oil and gas companies and members of the investment community, have come together to launch this website."

You're shitting me! No big oil and gas companies? No uncollected royalty money going towards this endeavor?
You mean this little grass roots effort can afford Hill and Knowlton all on its own?

Among the petitions and letters you can send to the editor or your MLA begging them to hold off on collecting those BILLIONS in resource revenues that are owned by the people of Alberta and not the oil companies, is a vid clip of Jim McCormick being interviewed on a TV breakfast program. McCormick is able to evade the interviewer's questions as to who is actually backing Get It Right Alberta but does offer this valuable insight :

"I don't believe that any society has ever taxed itself into prosperity."

Really? What exactly is your model for no-tax prosperity here, Jim? Chad? Nigeria?

The website manages to maintain a fairly neutral tone in its quest to convince Albertans they really don't want the money that they should have already received.
The endorsement from the Alberta Alliance party? Not so much :

"..catastrophic consequences for all Albertans
To suggest that costs can be controlled by good management in a booming economy is an absolute lack of understanding of the current state of the oil and gas industry.
To scare away additional capital could result in layoffs tenfold higher than currently being experienced.
The Alliance Party suggests that we should be what Albertans want us to be and that is deal-keepers.
Albertans want Alberta to be known as trustworthy.

The key is to not kill the goose that is laying the golden eggs for Albertans."

I would respectfully suggest that "the key" here is to avoid having your head so far up the goose's ass that you are mistaken for paté foie gras.

As unlikely as it sounds, if their past track record is anything to go on, H&K could very well prove successful in their bid to convince Albertans that they don't want their own money.

Previously Hill and Knowlton sold the American people on the first Gulf War using imaginary babies being thrown out of imaginary incubators.
Remember Nayirah, the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US and a member of the Kuwaiti royal family who was coached by Hill and Knowlton to pose for the cameras as the poor traumatized hospital volunteer who witnessed the baby-throwing and whose life was now consequently in danger?

Grass roots "advocacy" at its finest. Only the oil was real. The oil is always what is real.

H/T Holly Stick for the links.
Previous post on recent Alberta fiascos here.