"We've done this experiment successfully in Canada"

We don't often get to see into the minds of cross border American conservative political operatives working in Canada. Here is one such snapshot, but first ...

CBC reported today on "CIMS-to-Go" or C2G, a new mobile app for the Cons Constituent Information Management System that allows party canvassers to collect and sort voter information faster than ever before - smiley face, frowny face - while keeping close tabs on candidates' and canvassers' efficiency.

Someone in the Cons IT dept, who is presumably right now clearing out their desk, blabbed to CBC that some Con ridings are "approved" to use it while others have to pay $2500. 

"The app comes with a script to follow, to make sure canvassers know what to say at the door."

CBC then went to Georganne Burke, who they describe as "a former regional organizer and community relations manager for the Conservatives", for more info. Ms. Burke has been using the newly released C2G app in her work for an unnamed "local Conservative campaign for the upcoming election". 

Hopefully this campaign does not involve menorahs.

Last September, The Daily Caller, a conservative Washington DC news and opinion website founded by Tucker Carlson and former adviser to Dick Cheney Neil Patel, explained what Burke was doing in Washington :

"Burke, a 45 year veteran of grassroots campaigning, was in Washington, D.C. on Sept. 3 [2014]  to help train conservatives on effective efforts to expand the reach for their ideas. Her credentials include being part of the team that eventually brought about a conservative majority government in Canada by effective outreach to minorities, led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper."

Dual citizen Burke, who has worked as a special assistant to Tony Clement and Tim Hudak and "as a political organizer for the Conservatives starting in 2004", describes herself in the interview :

"In my heart I will probably always be an American first and foremost. I'm a Yankee at heart and will be my while life. I'm truly an American."

She is very concerned about the "politics of division that is practiced on the left" in Canada - dividing people into various ethnic groups - and offers this advice about "connecting with the various cultural communities in the US" : 

"Why I actually came down here is because we've done this experiment successfully in Canada. It took us eleven years of hard work and I came down to tell people that this is a long game we have to play here, that this is not something that happens overnight ... It's about marketing ... You have to get out and create relationships with people that you want to be your customers."

Quite. 

G&M Oct 16 2007 : Tories target specific ethnic voters :

"Getting more votes from Jews and specific ethnic groups ..."

"Conservative community relations manager Georganne Burke told Conservatives that outreach calls on them to work beyond their traditional base, even if it means "to look outside your normal comfort zone."

Ms. Burke urged Conservative candidates and organizers to break down each riding's ethnic and religious composition, and directly target potential voters.

She said that Conservatives should use all available opportunities to "build the database" of ethnic voters, by renting or buying lists of names from third parties and by attending events where they can gather business cards and guest lists."

That's just so friggin' Conthink - inveigh against the dividing of people into ethnic minority groups and then do it.  

Update : Georganne Burke is senior VP at Pathway Group, recently in the news for ousting a pair of their lobbyists over their involvement with a company under investigation with the Ontario Securities Commission. 
One of those ousted, Pathway Group co-founder Kelly Mitchell, founded the voter contact firm Picea Partners in March 2010 with former CIMS Direct Voter Contact manager Andrew Harris. Picea handled Fantino's by-election teleconference with Mike Duffy in November 2010 - the one that didn't show up in Fantino's campaign expenses.

Meanwhile, Steve is overseas with yet another select group of MPs doing his ethnic voting diaspora thing.

Which brings me back to CBC's CIMS-to-Go article :

"The app comes with a script to follow, to make sure canvassers know what to say at the door."

Are the smiley/frowny faces ethnic colour-coded now?

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CIMS nostalgia

Whoa, imagine finding this again!  An old CBC broadcast of CBC's Keith Boag being given a walk through CIMS with commentary from Michael Geist and Garth Turner. I've posted it twice over the years only to have it taken down at source. We'll see if it stays up this time.

First broadcast over seven years ago on Nov.21 2007, the report shows CPC Direct Voter Contact manager Andrew Harris explaining CIMS to Boag. Mr. Harris left the Cons' employ a year later and founded his own voter contact firm, Picea Partners in 2010.

Billed as "Canada's first and leading provider of Telephone Town Hall meetings", Picea did a tele-townhall in 2010 for by-election Vaughan candidate Julian Fantino, hosted by Senator Mike Duffy. They've also worked with Tim Hudak and the Ontario PC party, and more recently James Moore and Peter Kent. The governments of Canada, Alberta, and New Brunswick are listed as clients.

On their North American direct marketing and sales page, Picea boasts of "25 billion records from hundreds of different sources" :

"We gather data from real estate and income tax assessments, voter registration, hydro & gas connections, bill processors, and other sources before we output our lists to ensure quality and accuracy for your campaign."

Their "wide variety of targeting options" includes "Age, Estimated Household Income, Marital Status, Gender, Home Value, Ethnicity, and more".

Huh.

With the Manning Centre hosting workshops for Con MPs on capturing cell phone and Facebook actions using Nationbuilder :

"you can export data out of CIMS, load it into NationBuilder, interact with people, and then load that data back into CIMS"

the Cons might have actually built that "political super-weapon" they bragged about in the last election.

h/t Waterbaby for new link to CIMS broadcast.

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Manning conference : Big Brother's big data

The Cons opposed collecting data for the long gun registry and the Canada long form census as "too intrusive" - and also muzzled Canadian federal scientists to keep any of their data from leaking out - but on Saturday they eagerly attended a conference to hear 'big data' proponents discuss how to collect more data about you in order to win elections.

Canada ‘light years’ behind U.S. on data mining in election campaigns, time to catch up, say experts 

Innovations in big data have started a “revolution” in the way political parties target voters and win election campaigns ...

 “There is a revolution in the way campaigns are not only run, but won,” said Mike Martens, director of the Manning Centre’s School of Practical Politics, at the Manning Centre Conference March 9 in Ottawa, at a session called, “The Cutting Edge in Practical Politics, The Data Revolution.” 

At the conference, Washington Slate columnist Sasha Issenberg explained in the years since the 2000 election in the United States, detailed voter registration information has been combined with information on individual customers from corporations to produce a detailed portrait of voters, how much they earn, their ethnicity, political affiliations, age, gender, annual income, and more.

It’s “a breakthrough,” said Mr. Issenberg, who wrote The Victory Lab: The Secret Science of Winning Campaigns.

Tom Flanagan, "the godfather of CIMS" the Cons' voter database, told the G&M last year that purchased consumer data on spending habits was not added to CIMS while he was with the party.
But last year I posted a 2008 vid of CBC's Keith Boag getting a walk-through of CIMS by a Con staffer, augmented by commentary from Garth Turner and Michael Geist. Google took it down sometime this year so you can't watch it now and all that remains is a quote beneath it left by an outraged commenter :

"All of them have access to the list of voters provided by Elections Canada - from there they are free to buy data commercially."
What!

But there's this :
Can Press, October 18, 2007 : Tory database draws ire of privacy experts

The federal Conservative party's central database is set up to track the confidential concerns of individual constituents without their knowledge or consent, says former Tory MP Garth Turner. Privacy experts agree the practice is a clear breach of standard privacy ethics -- but probably not the law, because federal political parties fall into a legislative grey area. 

Both the federal Liberals and the NDP have separate databases for constituency work and voter tracking. Data does not migrate between the two. But the Conservatives use a single clearing house for all data collection, storage, data mining, mailing lists, voter tracking and any other partisan use such information may serve.

A single clearing house for all data. 
And now a further blurred line between "the Party" and the government, courtesy of Michael Sona last week :

Really? Government staffers in the public service working on the Hill "were encouraged" to add info about Canadians to a partisan Con Party election campaign database? Government subsidizing a political party?

I guess that's why they call it "the Harper government".

Update : Kai Nagata covered the Manning Conference for The Tyee. Here he catches Blogging Tory founder Stephen Taylor, who now holds Harper's old job as head of the National Citizens Coalition, bragging on the 'big data' panel about the Conservative Caucus Research Bureau's use of public funds for micro-targeting voters in 2008 :

"We 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." 

Taylor's group, the NCC, gathers and cross-references sets of data to build pictures of voter types and figure out how to speak to them. 

"We found that CBC privatization petition signers are most likely Molson Canadian drinkers, they watch Dexter on television, they enjoy Sun News Network, they vote Conservative, they're from Toronto, and they donate to World Vision." Those discoveries help shape the messaging. 

A voter who proves unusually engaged on an issue can often be recruited as a volunteer. That's where Mike Martens comes in. Formerly the regional organizer for the federal Conservative Party in B.C., he now runs the School of Practical Politics at the Manning Centre. From now until the next election, Martens will be training thousands of volunteers online and at the school's new campus in Calgary.

From the Conservative Caucus Research Bureau to CIMS to your ear - your tax dollars hard at work re-electing the Harper government.


Best irony overload at the conference came from Tony Clement, MNC big data panelist and President of the Treasury Board of the most secretive government in Canadian history :

“I happen to think of data as Canada’s 21st century resource. … When all the information is supplied to the citizenry, why does government have to make the decision?"

And speaking of Tom Flanagan ... You know all those writers' and academics' editorials coming to Flanagan's defence over his child pornography remarks :

Jonathan Kay : The mobbing of Tom Flanagan is unwarranted and cruel 
Barry Cooper : Some academics are coming to the defence 
Rainer Knopff : U of C owes Tom Flanagan an apology 
William Watson : Tom Flanagan, meet George Orwell
Conrad Black : Turning public discourse into a never-ending shriek of ‘unclean!’
Jonathan Kay again : Tom Flanagan’s media critics leave their spines at the door

They all write for the Manning Centre's C2C Journal,  financed by Gwyn Morgan, his spouse Patricia Trottier, and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy 

Photo of Knopff at MNC 2013 sporting Flanagan button : David Climenhaga, Alberta Diary

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