THE RISE AND FALL AND RISE OF RMG

Prior to the 2011 federal election fraud/robocalls scandal, few Canadians had ever heard of CIMS, the Conservative Party of Canada’s national permanent voter-tracking database, or its close relationship to Responsive Marketing Group or RMG, the Conservatives' main GOTV phone bank and fundraising company used in that election by the CPC national campaign and 97 individual Conservative candidates.

Canadians did not know that the Conservative Party paid RMG $1.4million and provided them with a CIMS voters list and a script for its call centre employees to read to voters. That script, according to Canada Elections investigators, read in part : 

“Elections Canada has changed some voting locations at the last moment. To be sure, could you tell me the address of where you’re voting.”

This last in direct contravention of Elections Canada's request that "users of the dataset of all polling sites respect the following restrictions: that the dataset be used for internal purposes only; that it not be used to inform voters of their voting location."

As it happens, the percentage of voting stations across Canada that changed location in the final week of the election was just 0.003.

In their section on RMG in the 2014 Summary Investigation Report on Robocalls, Elections Canada reported that investigators who listened to the recorded live calls noted that “RMG provided wrong poll location information in 27% of the cases involving complainants.”

“In some cases the difference was a few kilometres; in several cases the difference was more than 100 kilometres. The furthest location, provided to an elector called twice by RMG, was 740 kilometres from the correct location.”

“From April 29 to May 1, 2011, returning officers in 11 electoral districts reported elector complaints of incorrect poll location information coming from Conservative Party callers. When contacted by returning officers, local Conservative Party campaigns advised that the calls were from the national campaign of the party, and that the campaigns could not stop them.”

“Investigators were told by the Conservative Party national campaign chair that Elections Canada had no authority to limit a party's use of the poll location data.”

The Conservative Party’s partnership with RMG dates back to 2003 when RMG founder and president Michael Davis pitched the idea of a fundraising machine attached to a national permanent CIMS database to Stephen Harper's mentor Tom Flanagan.

Mike Harris strategist Stewart Braddick came on board to head up Target Outreach, an affilliate firm providing "fundraising and direct voter contact solutions to U.S. Right of Centre Political Organizations". 
Greg Kaufman signed up with RMG in 2007. From his bio at RMG parent group iMarketing Solutions, where he became Chief Knowledge Officer in 2010 :

"Greg has extensive experience in IT management. For six years, he worked for the Ontario PC Party as part of the IT / Direct Voter Contact Team. There, he helped develop CIMS, a revolutionary political database tool that is in wide use today.

Following his time with the Ontario PC Party, Greg spent three years working for Elections Ontario as a manager in the register division, where he compiled and managed the Provincial Voters List."

Flanagan : “CIMS provided a receptacle for the hundreds of thousands of records generated by RMG’s large-scale calling programs.”

In 2009 Preston Manning at the Manning Centre for Building Democracy presented RMG founder Michael Davis with the Manning Centre Pyramid Award for Political Technology, “recognizing RMG's role in helping to build the conservative movement in Canada” :

“Since its inception, RMG has raised more than $75 million for right of centre causes in Canada, and helped to elect hundreds of 'right of centre' politicians at municipal, provincial and national levels."

In March 2010 RMG parent company iMarketing Solutions merged with Xentel, a company with an alarming history of lawsuits on both sides of the Canada/US border over its fundraising practices. That year they spent $1,839,000 on equipment to update their dialing platform and another $1,453,000 in 2011.

In the first quarter after the 2011 election, iMarketing Solutions posted $24M in revenue, but according to their Canadian Stock Exchange statement : "For the year ended December 31, 2011, the Company had a loss of $5,253,000."

A 2012 legal challenge supported by the Council of Canadians was based in part on the affidavit of Annette Desgagne, a RMG call centre worker who reported that three days before the 41st federal election she and her co-workers were given scripts to mislead voters on election day into going to the wrong location to vote.

From the Desgagne 2012 affidavit :

“The new scripts we were to read did not identify that we were calling on behalf of the Conservative Party nor did we mention the local Conservative candidate. The new script, as far as I can recall, was as follows: “Hello. My name is Annette Desgagne. I am calling from the Voter Outreach Centre. Elections Canada has made some last minute changes to the polling stations.”

Conservative Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton served motions to have the case thrown out of court before the supporting evidence had been filed. 
RMG CEO Andrew Langhorne, a former election campaign worker for Stephen Harper and seven years a Director of Voter Contact and Information Management for Premier Mike Harris and the Ontario PC Party, filed an affidavit in August calling Desgagne's affidavit "categorically false". 
The plaintiffs' suit to overturn election results in six ridings was unsuccessful and the court ascribed no blame to RMG.


Four months later on April 8 2013, RMG announced it was closing its call centres and laying off call centre employees, and four days after that iMarketing Solutions and all its 18 Canadian and American subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the US.
At the time they owed the Canadian federal government $1 million in unpaid taxes.

CEO Andrew Langhorne was sanguine :

“The nature of our business often necessitates ramping work up and down based on business requirements.”

And sure enough the 42nd federal election has brought them out above ground once again, now known as IMKT Direct Solutions in Canada and iMarketing Acquisitions in New Mexico. They are currently posting ads to hire call centre workers across Canada and Andrew Langhorne is once again launching those phone banks for Voter Outreach Centre, the name registered in February 2011 and used by RMG in the previous election as well. 

Households across Canada from Ottawa to BC reported receiving their calls beginning in December.
Port Alberni municipal councillor Chris Alemany got a call on August 4 :

“Hi, this is the Voter Outreach Centre for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. We would like to know if we can count on your support for Stephen Harper in the upcoming election”

His wife picked up another call 11 days later :

"Hi, this is _name of person_ with the Voter Outreach Centre. We would like to know if we can count on your vote for Stephen Harper in the upcoming election."

Councillor Alemany : "Note the difference from my call? They didn’t specifically identify the Voter Outreach Centre as being a part of the Stephen Harper campaign."

A new script or a bit of free lancing on the part of the call centre employee?
Either way, they did mention Steve in there so it's all still legal.

Operators are standing by...

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Boycott the Royal Bank - Part 2

Shorter Gord Nixon : Look, they're not your jobs, they're our jobs, and if we choose to move our jobs offshore to another company without you because it's cheaper, that's just business. Besides, only one of the 13 dudes we brought in to RBC came under iGATE's temporary foreign worker application - the rest of them are house guests.

About that one iGATE dude : G&M : 

The federal government is investigating Royal Bank of Canada’s move to outsource technology jobs and reviewing paperwork submitted by its contractor to bring in temporary foreign workers. The probe centres on what the government sees as “apparent discrepancies” regarding RBC’s explanation of the events.
RBC came under fire on the weekend after allegations emerged that Canada’s largest bank contracted iGate Corp. to handle the outsourcing of certain technology jobs, and the firm was using temporary foreign workers to displace RBC technology staff. The bank denied those claims, and said it does not get involved in the hiring practices of the companies it hires. 

“An investigation is under way and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada officials are currently reviewing the labour market opinions submitted by iGate in great detail, based on apparent discrepancies between RBC’s public statement and information which has previously been provided to the government,” said Alyson Queen, a spokeswoman for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley. 

Meanwhile when CBC interviewed Diane Finley's parlsec Kellie Leitch about the bankster issue, Leitch went on and on and on about "very critical labour shortages in Canada". Way to entirely miss the effing point, Kellie. These people had jobs.

But it's not just RBC of course. Two minutes of statements from employees replaced by foreign workers at TD Canada Trust, Scotiabank, and RBC :



Yesterday CBC Go Public reporter Kathy Tomlinson, who broke the RBC offshoring in-and outsourcing jobs story, was on CBC BC Early Edition. She said she also heard the same stories from terminated employees at Bank of Montreal and CIBC. Excerpted transcript :

I'm getting emails from people who are management, that are high in this and who know how it works. It seems to me that the banks essentially have a template and these outsourcing companies have a template too - they know exactly how to present their case for bringing these workers in, and remember it's the outsourcing company that actually brings the workers in. They're the one that apply to the government for permission and they're the ones that get these workers the visas., right? 

But of course the banks are involved - they're a partnership. So it looks to me from what I'm hearing that there's a template that they've developed that's approved by the government." 

Anna Maria Tremonti's show today took on the larger issue of global outsourcing: 

The insourced foreign workers go home to do the work from their own countries where they are paid 50% of what the Canadians they replaced made.

We have had foreign temporary workers for over 40 years but since 2006 there's been an explosion of low skill temporary foreign workers who can stay here for up to four years and be paid 15% less. Not just low skill workers, this has now evolved to include engineers.

Armine Yalnizyan from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives : 

" Importing people to learn the skills so they can take the skills out - what kind of public policy is that? The Economic McAction Plan."

Alberta Federation of Labour, today, on guest worker permits provided by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada :

Between April 25 and December 18, 2012, more than 2,400 Accelerated Labour Market Opinion or ALMO guest-worker permits – which are supposed to be reserved for highly-skilled employment – have been granted to fast-food restaurants, convenience stores and gas stations. McDonalds, Tim Hortons, A&W, Subway Sandwiches. Are we supposed to believe that these are ‘high-skill’ employment opportunities? 

More than 54 per cent (2,640) of the ALMO approvals in the country were for Alberta-based employers.  ...  The list of businesses in Alberta who received ALMO approvals included 33 A&W restaurants. 

The ALMO stream, introduced in last year’s omnibus budget bill, is proving to be the latest evidence that the temporary foreign worker program is part of a low-wage agenda on the part of radical Tea-Party Tories.

How are young people supposed to compete for temporary low skill jobs to get the education they need in order to finally not be able to get the IT jobs they trained for because they've all gone offshore? Because the real news here is that good education and a relevant skill level is no longer enough to keep you off the unemployment line. 

Armine Yalnizan is right - this is terrible public policy on the government's part.

And finally, the Cons fundraiser/voter contact company, Xentel/RMG/iMarketing Solutions Group, announced yesterday that it is laying off its call centre workers. (h/t Holly Stick)

Will they be outsourcing those jobs offshore? I ask because the Conservative Party of Canada is currently trolling Creekside reading all the posts on Royal Bank and iMarketing Solutions/RMG.

Boycott the Royal Bank of Canada, Part 1

Boycott the Royal Bank - Part 3             Boycott the Royal Bank ... and Amanda Lang
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RoboCon : RMG and the US Right to Life Committee

--- updated below ---

In August 2004, three telemarketing companies - RMG (Responsive Marketing Group), Xentel DM, and Univision Marketing Group - jointly petitioned the Governor General to have not-for-profit organizations and their fundraisers exempted from certain CRTC regulations they felt were unfair to the success of their trade. Citing the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, "freedom of expression", and the "moral rights of authors" over their copyrighted telephone scripts, they objected to :

"the requirement that tele-canvassing service providers identify themselves, their organization, and their organization’s client right at the beginning of the call"

because, among othe reasons :

"if a recipient other than the intended recipient hears the name of a not- for-profit or a cause that he or she is not supportive of, there is a high likelihood that that not-for-profit is vetted before reaching the intended recipient. The not-for-profits most affected by this are those which represent views that society deems controversial or not mainstream, for example: gun control, women's rights, abortion, environmental issues, politics or religious issues."

Women's rights are controversial?

So given that RMG described itself in the brief as "providing direct marketing services to non-profit and political organizations across Canada and a relatively small number of North American corporations" and on its website as working "exclusively with right-of-centre campaigns", I googled up RMG and abortion.

NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE COMMITTEE, INC. of WASHINGTON, DC will be conducting a telephone solicitation campaign beginning November 23, 2009 and ending July 26, 2010. NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE COMMITTEE, INC. has hired RMG USA, INC. of TORONTO, ON, to conduct the campaign.  According to the fundraising contract filed with the State, NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE COMMITTEE, INC. will receive a minimum of 1 per cent of the gross funds raised from this solicitation. RMG USA, INC. will be required to file a financial report on the results of this solicitation campaign within 90 days after the end of the campaign.

Financial reports were duly filed in Washington, Colorado, Connecticut, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Washington, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California ... ok, all the states apparently.

Here's Colorado's in 2011 : 

That 1% to Charity is a bit of a misnomer as the contract signed by NRL Exec Director David N O'Steen and RMG's Andrew Langhorne states : "The main Agreement between RMG and Charity is not a percentage-based agreement ... and the language is provided only for the purposes of complying with the contract disclosure requirements of the states ..."  
Instead RMG USA was paid a fixed hourly fee to contact NRLC's house file of donors to recruit them as volunteers in a phone/mail/online pledge drive to enlarge the NRLC donor membership.

And that "USA" after RMG's name? RMG founder Michael M Davis incorporated RMG USA, Inc. in Ontario in March 2008 under RMG's then 1235 Bay Street address. 

Coincidentally, there is another unrelated telemarketing/data-mining company based in Richmond Virginia called Response Marketing Group (rmg-usa.com) who once had an office in Toronto many years ago called Interactive Marketing Group .

Update : It's a small small small telemarketing world.
Steven Hubley, founder of Univision Marketing mentioned at the top of the post, later became RMG's VP of Business Development. From his bio at left bank international where he is a partner :

"Founded in 1988, RMG has been a leader in high quality, high response telefundraising. RMG merged with Xentel in 2010 and their fundraising division, [is] now known as Engage Interactive " 

RMG's parent organization iMarketing Solutions Group lists Engage Interactive as a subsidiary.
Engage Interactive President Marianne Mulders is RMG's President of Non-Profit and Relationship Management, and was formerly listed as President of RMG USA.
Len Wolstenholme, spokesperson  for Xentel for over 20 years and now Chief Compliance Officer of iMmarketing Solutions Group, is listed on Engage Interactive's Meet the Management page.

In August 2012, Xentel advised the West Virginia Sec. of State's office that its new head office address was at 700 W. Virginia Street, Suite 700, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is the same address as the US office for both Engage Interactive and another iMarketing Solutions Group subsidiary - Target Outreach : 

"For the past 15 years the principals of Target Outreach have helped Republicans win."  

Xentel's Sept. 2012 Renewal of Charity Registration at the US Sec. of State lists David Winograd of Mequon Wisconsin as President of Xentel. Winograd is also President of iMarketing Solutions.
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RoboCon: RMG/Xentel/iMarketing Solutions revisited

Earlier this year the Cons' principal voter contact company Responsive Marketing Group came under heavy media scrutiny for

•  its role as a partner in the Cons' CIMS data collection on Canadian voters used by 97 Con candidate campaigns in the last election,
• allegations made by at least one former RMG call centre employee that their scripts were directing voters to the wrong polling stations, 
• aggressive fundraising tactics for the Cons with pensioners, and
• its merger with Xentel.

In March RMG put out a press release protesting the unfairness of being smeared by its association with Xentel, a company with a dodgy  robo/live call   history in both Canada and the US, that RMG had "acquired" two years earlier.
McMaher :

The company now operates under the umbrella of iMarketing Solutions Group. During the election campaign in the spring of 2011, the merged company was run by co-CEOs Michael Davis, formerly of RMG, and Michael Platz, formerly of Xentel 

As I wrote at the time, what was less clear was which company had acquired the other, with most news reports, like Bloomberg's Business Week for example, describing RMG as "a subsidiary of Xentel" and iMarketing Solutions as an "alternate name of Xentel".

Three weeks ago, iMarketing Solutions Group published its Canadian Stock Exchange Listing.
In the following excerpts, iMS is "The Company".

"On October 28, 2010, the shareholders of the Company approved a name change of the Company to iMarketing Solutions Group Inc. from Xentel DM Incorporated (“Xentel”) as an initial step in rebranding and reorganizing the operations. 

The Company merged with RMG on March 3, 2010. 

On behalf of political clients, the Company conducts direct tele-service contact with potential voters to assist in the assessment and evaluation of political and consumer attitudes.
The Company continues the practice of subcontracting some of its work.  This is done on a strategically selective basis where the subcontractor has superior data in a specific area and/or can execute the work on a more economical basis.    

Marketing List Rentals : The Company rents selected proprietary databases to not-for-profit organizations where they do not compete with our normal business activities. These databases are developed through our normal course of business. 

Re the CRTC's Do Not Call Lists, operated by Bell Canada :

A number of exemptions were made in the DNCL due to efforts of the Company and a group of diverse stakeholders. The following types of calls are exempt from using the DNCL:

(a) calls made by or for registered political campaigns, associations, candidates or persons seeking a political nomination,
(b) calls made to parties with whom the caller has an existing business relationship,
(c) calls made by or on behalf of a registered charity
(d) calls made for market research purposes

Throughout the report are numerous allusions to financial hardship with "substantial doubt that the Company will be able to continue as a going concern" without "access to additional financing".
Equipment purchases of $1,839,000 and $1,453,000 in 2010 and 2011 were "related mostly to the ongoing update of the Company’s dialing platform and information technologies".
The principals are making out ok though, with compensation packages of well over $½ million each  for Chairman Platz and President Winograd for 2010, not including their directors' fees.

David A. Winograd in Wisconsin was President of US operations of Xentel DM since 2003 - now President of iMarketing Solutions.
Michael Platz, Chairman, CEO, and "founder of the predecessor company Xentel", served as Co-Chief Executive Officer of iMS til Sept 2011 and Chairman til Jan. 2012. Now just a iMS director.
Andrew Langhorne, Mike Harris Voter Contact Director for 7 years and COO of RMG since Nov. 2006, now COO for iMS. 
Michael M. Davis, founder of RMG, is "Managing Director, Political"
Listed among iMS's 20 subsidiary companies like RMG and Xentel Inc - half of them Canadian and half US - is Stewart Braddick's Target Outreach for Republican campaigns.

Back in 2005, Sean Holman at Public Eye Online reported on a heavily loaded Xentel telemarketing poll leading up to the Vancouver civic elections. Their questions :

Number One: "The Vancouver Sun today says that the campaign is getting dirty and scare tactics are starting to fly. Does this make you more or less likely to vote?"  

Two: "It says in the Sun that Jim Green left COPE in tatters and with a great big debt. Does this make you more or less likely to vote?"  

And three: "Both Sam Sullivan and Jim Green are accusing each other of dirty tricks and negative campaigning. Does this make you more or less likely to vote?"

Xentel has merged with the Cons #1 voter marketing firm - working, as RMG puts it, "exclusively with right-of-centre campaigns ".  Does this make you more or less likely to vote?
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