Sun News Exposed

" Sun News has been a strong voice supporting pro-life, pro-family and limited government ideals. This is what my show, Byline, has been about from the beginning," wrote Sun News host Brian Lilley to select supporters. "We are asking friends to help us out by signing our petition which will tell the CRTC that Sun News is a valued service that all Canadians should have access to."

Or rather : Canadians will be forced to pay for if they successfully petition the government to force 'free market' companies into doing business with Sun News.

So who answered the call?

Well, as already noted first by Alberta Diary : LifeSite: Sun News asks pro-lifers to support 'do or die' application.

The anti-choice Campaign Life Coalition : Sign the petition to keep Sun News Network on the Air

Canadian Shooting Sports Assoc. : Attention firearms enthusiasts -- please vote NOW to keep Sun News Network on the air

Catholic Canada : Help Sun News get a fair shake

Senator Patrick Brazeau : Dude, how many more ways can I say this: I. Support. Sun. News. Getting. Mandatory. Carriage. (With associated fees.)"

While over at Counterjihad!, if you scroll down a bit under
Breaking News! – FOIA response confirms Obama using stolen Social Security number, 
you'll find Canadians! Sun News needs your help!  

"Our rivals are doing everything in their power to stop us from getting a new broadcast licence. We’re used to their tactics, but we can’t let them get away with this. We need your support. We need you to take action.
Right now we’re getting the short end of the stick. Many local cable providers are refusing to offer Sun News! In fact, we’re only allowed in 4 out of 10 households in Canada and that’s not fair."

Along with alerts in Sun Media Corp's 43 daily newspapers and over 250 community weekly papers across the country, the largest press group in Canada, and CanoeTV, Canoe.ca., plus the daily harangues from Spun News itself.
Quite the little support group they have going there.

About that constant Sun News refrain: "only available in 4 out of 10 Canadian households."

Fagstein : Fact-checking the debate over Sun News

According to the latest CRTC Communications Monitoring Report, the major providers (Rogers, Shaw, Videotron, Cogeco and Bell) combine for 10.2 million subscribers out of 11.8 million total. According to the same report, 80% of subscribers have digital service, so that means at least 8 million of the 12 million (two thirds) could add Sun News to their service if they wanted to.

So I guess they don't want to, huh? Probably don't want to be forced to either.

Michael Geist  : CRTC should put consumers first and drop ‘must carry’ requirements

"CRTC - stop treating Canadians as ATMs for the broadcasters by dropping mandatory distribution altogether, while requiring broadcast distributors to offer all licensed channels to their subscribers in a pick-and-pay format so that at long last consumers get to decide what they want to watch and pay for."

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Paging Snuffleupagus to the SunNews white courtesy petition

The last time Sun News needed help with an online petition, Snuffleupagus and Homer Simpson were there to help, mysteriously adding their names  to 80,000 others on a "Stop Fox News North" Avaaz petition in 2010, along with a number of real people like Kady and Stephen Maher who didn't sign it.

Sun News mastermind, Kornkob ethanol lobbyist, and Steve's former director of communications Kory Teneycke 'discovered' the fraudulent names and wrote it up in his Sun News column on Sept 3 2010 in a bid to discredit the petition ....  only to get busted by Kady who pointed out the names on the petition were not published so how did he know about them then, huh?

Kory, who had wanted a Fox News for Canada as far back as 2003 and in March 2009 went with boss  Harper to meet with Fox News magnates Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes in New York, resigned unexpectedly from Sun News four days after his Homer/Snuffy column, but returned as Sun News VP three and a half months later.

The very same day Homer and Snuffy were helping out Sun News with their bogus petition entries, Kory went on CBC's Power and Politics :

"We are not nor have we ever asked for mandatory carriage of this station where Canadians would have to be obliged to pay. We are saying that we would like to have it offered but theoretically it could be carried by no one ... these are all private sector negotiations." 

Or, as he put it in his Homer/Snuffy column :

"Sun TV News is not, nor has it ever, asked for “mandatory carriage” by cable or satellite companies. As the critics correctly point out, this would be tantamount to a tax on everyone with cable or satellite service"

Well that was then; this is now. 
Now they are asking the CRTC for exactly that - mandatory carriage to be included in every basic cable package in Canada plus guaranteed placement on the lower end of the dial. Because it turns out the 'free market' they go on about so relentlessly turns out to be just another of the many many obstacles they have to overcome on their path to Spun News greatness, like Ezra wearing that orange wig above to mock Jack Layton's funeral.

Sun News Network is arguing its signal must be broadcast into every Canadian home if it is ever going to recover from losses that have already reached $17-million a year.

This would generate about $18-million a year for the network ...

... sparking a whole slew of "then cancel my cable" comments under the G&M article.

Sun News argues that many Canadians have expressed enthusiasm for its conservative commentary-intensive programming, and would watch the channel regularly, but they don’t know it even exists. The digital cable or satellite connections currently required to see it haven’t been adopted by enough viewers in the senior citizen demographic that Quebecor concedes it is largely appealing to.

So Sun News has put up its own petition to the CRTC, presumably appealing to the angry racist misogynist xenophobic pro-gun pro-christian anti-choice anti-environment anti-union anti-gay anti-pot anti-Quebec anti-government anti-Roma anti-FN anti-Islam anti-arts tough-on-crime "senior citizen demographic" who "don't know it even exists" to lend their support. 

Well ok then. Maybe Homer and Snuffy could help out here.

Update : Arghh. Alberta Diary : SUN NEWS PLEADS WITH ANTI-CHOICE GROUP TO BACK ITS QUEST FOR 'RIGHT TO LIFE' SUBSIDY

Brian Lilley : "Sun News is the strongest voice for the pro-life cause on television in Canada. Bar none."

Sun VP Teneycke : " we need to demonstrate a groundswell of support for Sun News, and the readers of LifeSiteNews can help."

You can submit your opinion on SunNews' application directly to the CRTC here.
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Christy Clark's Big Fat Tarsands Fundraisers

Our national media seems pretty exercised about Alberta tarsands bigwigs and political insiders throwing a fundraiser in Calgary for our unelected Premier Christy Clark's Liberals to slag off on the NDP :

CBC : Albertans hold fundraiser for BC Liberals
G&M : Clark defends out-of-province fundraising for B.C. Liberal candidate
FPost : Alberta powerbrokers throw lifeline to B.C. premier as threat of tougher pipeline fight from NDP looms
Sun : B.C. Liberals tap Calgary crowd for election funds
Edmonton Journal : Alberta Tories helping to raise cash for beleaguered B.C. Liberals

They do know that last October, Chrusty went straight from her "frosty" meeting with Alberta's Alison Redford in which she loudly promised to protect BC's environment from Alberta pipelines, directly to a fundraiser at the Calgary Petroleum Club, also hosted by the same Murray Edwards, chairman of Canadian Natural Resources Limited, and exactly these same Alberta dudes, don't they? And that the year before on October 20, 2011, a $500-a-plate fundraiser was held for her, again at the Calgary Petroleum Club. 

They do realize that Chrusty's 2011 October Alberta fundraiser was set up by her then chief of staff Ken Boessenkool, formerly Tarsands Harper's chief of staff, right?

They have noticed that it was Encana's Gwyn Morgan who smoothed over the transition from the unre-electable Gordo to the unelected Premier Chrusty - the same Encana who have donated over a half a million dollars to Chrusty's Liberals in the last 3 years. Right?

Oh well, if Calgary could hold a $1000-a-plate fundraiser to elect John McCain for president in 2008, I guess Chrusty might be worth $125-a-plate to them in 2013.

h/t MoS and BCLib

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Update : RossK brings the "foreign special interests and their deep pocket puppets" angle to Encana's financial support for Christy. But come on, Ross, PetroChina buying 49.9% of an Encana project with an additional $1B to come over the next four years falls a whole .1% within Steve's new foreign ownership guidelines. So we're good here and no review required says Industry Canada.
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RoboConstructions: Del Mastro and the GeoVote

Update June 13 : The above vid has been taken down from Youtube so here's CTV's Youtube version of it :



Back to original January post .... Dean Del Mastro and his $21,000 personal cheque to Frank Hall at Holinshed Research Group for voter ID/GOTV services are back in the news tonight as McMaher reports the RCMP are investigating Steve's hapless parliamentary secretary/RoboCon pointman for his various 2008 election campaign financing irregularities and their apparent ham-fisted cover-up.

The  details   were   extensively   covered   back   in   June, including Holinshed's lapsed Feb 2 2010 lawsuit against Del Mastro for non-payment of use of their CIMS-like interactive voter-tracking system called GeoVote, and the six figure Canada Economic Action Plan cheque Holinshed received to develop GeoVote in 2009/10 ... before Holinshed dropped off the map themselves in 2011.


I haven't seen the vid up top of Frank Hall explaining the GeoVote system in 2008 posted anywhere else before so here ya go. In this demonstration, Mr Hall pinpoints locations of how people voted in the Don Valley West riding :

"What we've done is put a face on it and a geographic location on it and a contact that becomes personal or personable all of a sudden because you can take that data and use it - it puts a name and a face and a geographic location on something and that's powerful."

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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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Give a RoboCon barcode this Christmas

Are you tired of shlepping around the mall looking for a gift that will top that asteroid you had named after her last year?

This Christmas give that very special someone in your life the gift everyone across Canada is talking about ...
their own unique barcode in the Cons' CIMS data playbook.

Adopt a frowny/duh/smiley face just for her when you answer questions about Israel or the gun registry.

The CIMS Vote-O-Matic. It slices, it dices, it makes juliennefantino fries.
Operators are standing by.
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RoboCon : Poutine made easy

Text : Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher
Presentation : Robert Cross
Ottawa Citizen

This excellent interactive visual has been around for a while but with 6 other ridings in court this week challenging election fraud, perhaps we could use a refresher on just how devious was the trail of deception from the diabolical Mr Poutine in Guelph. [h/t Toe at Bread 'n Roses]

Not mentioned in it is how undetermined staffers from the Con election campaign in Guelph came to share a Racknine browser session with Mr. Poutine at 2am on Election Day.

McMaher's liveblog of the day's proceedings here.

A couple of today's notable discrepancies ...

When Election Canada sent alarums about bogus phone calls re polling station changes to Con lawyer Arthur Hamilton 3 days before the election, Hamilton emailed in reply :

"A number of our candidates" have had to confirm polling station …"

 But it was actually RMG who made those calls on behalf of Con Party central.

Hamilton also stated today that Elections Canada never advised parties not to phone electors about polling station changes, however EC's May2 Election website states :

In response to an initial request from a member of the Conservative Party of Canada, the preliminary list of all election day polls was sent to all parties. Because a polling site can be replaced by another at the last minute, and to ensure that electors always have access to the most accurate information regarding their location, Elections Canada indicated to political parties that the list supplied should only be used for internal purposes and that parties should not direct electors to polling sites. Political parties were invited to refer electors to the Elections Canada Web site, their local Elections Canada office or their voter information card for locations, to prevent electors from being directed to incorrect polling sites. Some political parties did not comply with this request.

As noted at Saskboy's in comments, it seems more than a little odd that longtime Con Party  lawyer Arthur Hamilton is part of the case as well as the Cons' lawyer on the case.
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RoboCon lawyers : It's all about Steve and money

... argued Con lawyer Arthur Hamilton today as he attempted to have the robo/live fraud calls case thrown out of Federal Court before it even begins.
Eight voters in 6 ridings, backed by the Council of Canadians, are asking the judge to overturn the election results in their ridings.

Shorter Arthur :
1) Council of Canadians doesn't like Steve.
2) The applicants' lawyer Steve Shrybman doesn't like Steve.
Therefore ... um ... I'm losing the legal argument here ...

Oh here we go : Pogge : You're only allowed to challenge an election result if you voted for the winner. 

Back in September, Arthur wanted the 8 voters to put up a $250,000 security deposit in order to get into court at all. Apparently in his view, defending democracy is a frivolous pursuit best left to people with a quarter of a million dollars to spare. 
Or as Judge Mosley asked him when he brought it up again today : "So we leave it to the wealthy?"
                                *cough* Court Challenges Program *cough*

Besides, continued shorter Arthur, the Council of Canadians stands to gain financially from backing this case, and from getting a brand new database of donors : "They're going to come out ahead." 
Thanks for the reminder, Arthur. Donate here.

Hamilton also unhappy that witness pollster Frank Graves of EKOS, whose statistical study on voter suppression is part of the applicants' case, donated $236 to Iggy or Rae or maybe the Libs but Graves' donation docs aren't clear which and neither is Graves.
Oh - brilliant witness credibility smackdown there, Arthur : Graves also donated to a Con candidate. 
Anyway, Arthur, please read Pogge again above.

So the election fraud case is all about Steve and money, according to Arthur so far.

I'm snagging all this live off twitter. 
To follow along at home :
CBC Laura Payton and Ottawa Citizen Liveblog

And a reminder of the 6 ridings represented in court here :

Nipissing-Timiskaming, Ont. won by Con Jay Aspin by 18 votes
Yukon, won  by Con Ryan Leef by 132 votes; 
Elmwood-Transcona, Man., won by Con Lawrence Toet by 300 votes  
Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, Sask., won by Con Kelly Block by 538 votes
Winnipeg South Centre, Man., won  by Con Joyce Bateman by 722 votes  
Vancouver Island North, B.C., won  by Con John Duncan by 1827 votes
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RoboConduct Unbecoming : To Canada from North Dakota

3 days before polls opened in the last federal election, Elections Canada officials were using the word "scam" to describe election irregularities, making this statement from the EC commish throwing in the towel two weeks after the election even before any investigation is  begun all the more astonishing :

 Commissioner of Canada Elections May 16, 2011

"There was no conduct reported that would bring into question the integrity of the election result overall or the result in a particular riding. Although misconduct was reported in several ridings, there is no complaint that it affected the overall result. There is some speculation in the media that the dirty tricks may have affected the result in some close contests.

The investigation of complaints regarding web based conduct - particularly third party conduct - is difficult, time consuming and may be inconclusive. The same applies to telephone communications that flow through intermediaries and foreign call centres. Consequently, the dirty tricks complaints which definitely occurred may not be resolvable, if the conduct is illegal under the Act."

Foreign call centres.

Back in March, Dean Del Mastro gaffed when he mistakenly accused Liberal MP Joe Volpe's campaign of using a foreign call centre from "North Dakota’s 701 area code". 
Amusingly it turned out to be Del Mastro and 13 other Cons who used Ohio-based Republican call centre Front Porch Strategies to help win their 14 ridings.

So given that the Cons are prone to blaming others for what they themselves get up to, let's have a look at just where North Dakota showed up in our last election.

There's the now famous "Idiot, he can hear us" call from North Dakota directing a Winnipeg Centre voter to the wrong polling station. The voter recalled overhearing "people discussing voters in Ontario, particularly Guelph and Thunder Bay."

Liberal MP Joe Volpe asked Elections Canada to formally investigate reports that residents in his Eglinton-Lawrence riding were being harassed by repeated calls from someone with a North Dakota phone number claiming to represent his campaign. 

Kingston Ontario residents reported being woken up at 2am by callers claiming to be from the Liberal Party, ditto calls on Easter Sunday, and being sent to the wrong polling station. Some of these calls were traced to a North Dakota calling centre.

Joyce Murray, MP for Vancouver Quadra said “several” supporters in her riding got late-night calls from people purporting to be Liberals who were “harassing and rude.” The calls came from a number in North Dakota.

London West candidate Doug Ferguson reported calls from Florida and the Dakotas " repeatedly asking them to take Liberal lawn signs. Also on election day, we had calls from people saying they'd received calls saying the polls had been moved."

The Barrie Liberal campaign office reported complaints about calls at 11:30 at night and 6:30am purporting to come from the Liberal Party. Call*69 showed the call came from South Dakota.

Lib MP Mr. Wilfert’s campaign office in Richmond Hill received an automated message two days before the election, showing a number from North Dakota. 

Voters in Ottawa-Orleans reported live calls and robocalls - rude, late at night,claiming to be from the Liberal Party - from North Dakota and Montana. 

Well you get the idea.

800 notes lists over a thousand complaints about North Dakota phone number 701-509-8703 - mostly to do with credit card scams and phishing. Two thirds down page one is this one dated Mar 27 2011 (h/t commenter Lexy at Sixth Estate) : 

followed up on April 14 by a concerned Andrew Gill campaign person asking for more info.

Liberal candidate Andrew Gill ran against Con MP Rick Dykstra in St Catherines in the last election.

“We had a ton of people call in during the campaign saying they got harassing phone calls all hours of the day and night,” Andrew Gill said, “over-the-top aggressive” calls. “The way we took it is they were trying to make our campaign look bad.”

Mr. Dykstra, now Parliamentary Secretary to Jason Kenney, has been mentioned on Creekside before in connection with rw US Republican robocallers Front Porch Strategies doing doorknocking for him in his riding, as well as his campaign manager joining FPS as the Canada-US liaison. 

Which is I think where we came in.

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Poodling up on the world stage

I rather take exception to Glenn Greenwald's characterization of Canada in yesterday's Guardian as the US's "new rightwing poodle to the north".

Sure, we joined the U.S., Israel, and 7 other nations  to oppose upgrading the UN observer status of the Palestinian Authority from "entity" to "non-member state".

And yes, we stood on an even smaller world stage this week with the US, Israel, Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau in voting against UN inspection of Israel's nuclear program - 174 to 6. 

But hey, when Israel announced it would "punish" the Palestinians for the UN vote by approving 3,000 more settlements, Canada made a point of declining to join the US in making a frowny face about it. 

So there. 


h/t West End Bob
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