I love the smell of grassroots in the morning

There's a new *grassroots effort* to defend democracy with a CPC MP-sponsored petition campaign to back it up. 

"Defend Democracy is a grassroots effort to put pressure on Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to commit to holding a national referendum on the issue of electoral reform prior to enacting any changes.
We believe firmly that no one government has the moral authority to fundamentally alter the nature of our democratic system without direct approval from Canadians."

Defend Democracy was created by Harrison Ruess and Stephen Taylor.

House of Commons petition E-48 was launched by Michael Rybacha and sponsored by CPC MP Scott Reid

So how grassroots is it?

Stephen Taylor - self-described "Conservative Party of Canada Pundit", president of the online company Rally For Canada Inc. offering "online issue campaigns, petition drives, and data mining" since 2009. Launched the short-lived HarperPAC with Trudeau attack ad last June. HarperPAC, registered to Rebel.ca Corp, still exists but is password-protected now.

Harrison Ruess - Harper's former Strategic Communications Content Manager in the PMO.

Michael Rybacha - Constituency assistant to former Con MP James Moore in Ottawa

Scott Reid, MP, petition sponsor - Conservative democratic institutions critic 

Funny story about Mr. Reid. 

In 2011, someone who worked under Conservative Speaker of the Senate Noel Kinsella for ten years interviewed Morton Blackwell of the US Leadership Institute for his dissertation. You'll perhaps recall Morton Blackwell, mentor of a young Karl Rove, as the Republican delegate who once handed out pink band aids mocking John Kerry's war wounds in Viet Nam. His Arlington Virginia Leadership Institute (budget - $14.8M per year) is a training ground for conservative activists practicing "grass-roots efforts".

Dissertation page 179 :

"Scott Reid, the Conservative Member of Parliament for Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington, had on two occasions arranged for the Leadership Institute to run day-long seminars for Conservative parliamentary staff and interns. 

Members of the Leadership Institute eventually began to organize candidate training schools in Canada. Mr. Blackwell also mentioned receiving a visit from Preston Manning, the founder of both the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance, when he was establishing his retirement project, the Manning Centre for Building Democracy. 

When asked about the criteria the Leadership Institute uses to decide which ideological groups in other countries the organization will work with, Mr. Blackwell indicated his test was their congruence with the political philosophy of Ronald Reagan. 

Today, the staff of the Leadership Institute runs training programs a few times a year through the aforementioned Mr. Reid’s office."

Grassroots.

h/t Canadian Cynic .

The Star leaks and the Fair Elections Act

Last week, the Star published a half dozen articles based on secret memos and a 70-page slide show about the Cons' 2015 election war room strategies anonymously leaked to them, as presented to the Conservative National Council above by Harper's former dcomm and now executive director of the CPC, Dimitri Soudas :

"Everything we do is part of the strategy to ensure we win in 2015 with another majority government"

The campaign is slated to start this spring. 

"Everything" includes a "drive, disrupt, disunity" campaign targeting Justin Trudeau from within the upcoming Liberal convention, led by :

"Soudas, Industry Minister James Moore (or Heritage Minister Shelly Glover as backup), former PMO chief of staff Guy Giorno, and a “yet-to-be-determined” Conservative who will be blogging for Macleans magazine";

leveraging Laureen into the public eye; and data-scraping comments under articles, Twitter and Facebook for possible supporters to add to their CIMS/CVote database. 

Blurring the lines between the public service and the Con Party on our dime has been a Con specialty.

Prior to the last election one of Jason Kenney's staffers was forced to resign after sending out a Con fundraising letter to target "very ethnic" ridings on Immigration Ministry letterhead but was then rehired back and given a promotion in the same ministry three months later.

A year ago, Michael Sona, Con volunteer in the 2011 election fraud riding of Guelph who afterwards became a staffer to Dimitri Soudas' wife, MP Eve Adams, tweeted about Hill staffers building the CIMS :

That would be gov staffers in the public service working on the Hill adding info about Canadians to a partisan Con Party election campaign database.

And in the same month Blogging Tory founder Stephen Taylor bragged to his Enbridge and TransCanada-sponsored "Big Data" audience at the Manning Centre for Building Democracy about the Conservative Caucus Research Bureau using taxpayer dollars to micro-target voters in 2008 :

"[The party] sent out, I think, probably a hundred million pieces of mail. Paid for by the taxpayer, I should say. They were each barcoded, and they were each very issue-specific. Most people would sort of ignore it or say 'this is garbage.' But the few people who would actually send it back and say 'Hell yeah, that's what I'm all about' -- you would be able to put them in a database."

The School of Practical Politics at the Manning Centre "will be training thousands of volunteers online and at the school's new campus in Calgary from now until the next election".

The newly leaked docs from the Star on data-mining Facebook :

"The slide show points to radio station CFRA’s Lowell Green, whom it identifies as an “Ottawa based conservative leaning talk show host.” It says a “recent Facebook posting—non-issue” received 55 Facebook “likes.” The document says the party was able to “positively identify 38 constituents (70 per cent ID rate).” Of those 38, it said five “are current members/ donors."

Using a simple Facebook application to ask “Have you voted yet?”:

If a voter clicks yes, “I voted,” the party would then place a badge in their friends’ news feeds saying “I Have Voted, Have you?”

Place a badge in their friends' news feeds?

Notably, under the Fair Elections Act the Cons are in such a rush to bash through Parliament, there is no mention of such data scoping, while targeting and contacting "current members/donors" like those mentioned above will no longer count as an election campaign expense after the writ is dropped. 

And with the Elections Canada's investigatory function now relocated to the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions under Peter MacKay, we'll likely never get to hear about our tax dollars hard at work re-electing another Con majority.

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