How to get the national media to show up at your campaign event early on a Friday morning when the weather is terrible.

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

Late Monday night I received an email from Joe Cressy, who is the media spokesman for NDP leadership candidate Paul Dewar (Ottawa Centre).

The subject line: "Joanna - you'll want to be at this announcement".

That caught my attention (even while knowing it is the job of a media relations person to tell me that I want to be at every announcement, no matter how big or small I as a journalist might think it is), but I asked for more details before deciding whether to make a note in my calendar.

The reply?

The announcement on Friday has two parts:
1. Paul will announce what we believe is the biggest endorsement of any of the leadership campaigns yet.
2. Paul will articulate the theme and next phase of his leadership campaign

Not bad.

A couple of colleagues in the Ottawa Bureau and I began brainstorming. Who could be a bigger endorsement than Ed Broadbent, who had already come out in support of Brian Topp? We started trying to think of someone of that stature.

One idea that came to mind was NDP MP Olivia Chow (Trinity-Spadina), who was married to the late Jack Layton and would provide symbolic weight to any campaign. She had already said that she was going to remain neutral in the leadership race, but people have changed their minds before. Cressy knows her well and co-chaired her campaign last year, so it was within the realm of possibility. I called her up and asked and the answer was a clear no. She wasn't even aware that Dewar was holding an event Friday and she still plans to remain neutral. Scratched her name off the list.

Another name that came up was former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis, whose work to help people affected by HIV/AIDS in Africa would fit well with Dewar's passion for international and humanitarian affairs. Cressy is director of communications at the Stephen Lewis Foundation, so there is a connection, and Lewis would be at the level of Broadbent when it comes to "big" names in the NDP world.

So I came right out and asked Cressy.

He replied:

"...(It's) not Stephen.  It's also not Batman or Obama as I've read on twitter. 

The endorser is someone who the grassroots of our Party (Paul's whole campaign focus) like a great deal."

That ruled out Lewis, but the "grassroots" mention was another clue. We needed to think of someone outside the NDP "establishment" but still popular with members.

I tried another couple of names. David Suzuki? Maher Arar?

Cressy replied:

"Neither...but that's the end of our guesses.

Though when you said Arar, I can't help but note that Monia Mazigh (Maher Arar's wife and a leading activist) has already endorsed Paul."

True. She has.

So, still scratching my head (Naomi Klein? Elizabeth May?) I trudged through the slush and snow/rain to the Westin Hotel in downtown Ottawa (where Liberals were milling about the hallways for their policy convention) by 8:15 a.m. to cover this big, surprise announcement.

And who was it?

Drumroll please...

NDP MP Charlie Angus (Timmins--James Bay), who Dewar said will also be his deputy leader if he wins the leadership race.

Now, don't get me wrong. Angus, as far as caucus endorsements go, is a catch. It is true that he is liked by grassroots members of the NDP and his deft handling of the G8 infrastructure spending issue and the housing crisis in Attawapiskat made him one of the stars in the House of Commons last year. His past life as a punk rock musician makes him an interesting character and he helped his party make gains in Northern Ontario. He's a good addition to the Dewar campaign team.

But "the biggest endorsement of any of the leadership campaigns yet"? That's debatable.

What is more certain is that this was a pretty smart way to get the national media (and there were quite a few of us there) to show up for a campaign announcement early on a Friday morning. And even if it's likely not what Cressy had in mind when he sent me that first email, here I am still writing about it.

UPDATE:

Cressy noticed this blog post, of course, and gave me a call to explain the thinking behind all the hype.

"Our true belief that Charlie is... in the context of a leadership race, he is certainly one of the biggest 'gets' that anybody will be able to get the whole campaign. Remember: leadership races are one member, one vote. And Charlie, within our party, he is somebody who many people were hoping was going to run for leader. If he was running, he would be a frontrunner right now, but he also brings lots of support with him. Lots of memberships, lots of folks, big and small names," said Cressy, going on to say that he realized the speculation had run more rampant than he had expected.

"So, I know it wasn't what people were expecting. The minute the Twittersphere went a little nuts, it was like 'Uh, Tim Tebow? Do we have him?' But it was an honest calculation of ours that he is one of the biggest MPs and certainly the biggest that we have," Cressy said.

Surprising, but not a surprise: NDP learned of MP's defection through the media

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

The defection of rookie NDP MP Lise St-Denis (Saint-Maurice--Champlain) to the Liberals Tuesday morning was a surprise to her former party, but not by the time she told them about it.

Karl Bélanger, senior press secretary to NDP Interim Leader Nycole Turmel, said he received a phone call from St-Denis about 10 minutes before her 10:30 a.m. news conference with Liberal Leader Bob Rae and Quebec Liberal MP Denis Coderre.

“She gave me a call and then told me as she was probably on her way to the press conference," Bélanger said Tuesday afternoon. "By that time the cat was out of the bag and her name was being widely reported by different media, either on social media or the networks."

As for Turmel, Bélanger said that St-Denis never spoke to her directly.

"She was not able to reach her," said Bélanger, who speculated that St-Denis likely called him after trying unsuccessfully to contact Turmel, but he did not know what time she had first reached out.

St-Denis had said at the news conference that she had "called" Turmel and "spoke" to Bélanger.

While her phone call to Bélanger may have been anti-climactic, the defection itself -- and the stated reasons for it -- threw the NDP for a loop.

One senior NDP source noted that while St-Denis told reporters it was differences in opinion over the Senate, the mission in Libya and a public-private partnership for the Champlain Bridge that drove her to abandon her party for the Liberals, she had never aired those complaints in caucus or to anyone else in the party.

“Watching her on television was the first time that we heard about that,” said the source, later adding that she was not a prominent voice of dissent on any issue.

 

Dispatches from the separatist witch hunt

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

Last week, the Toronto Star (specifically, political editor Colin MacKenzie, Ottawa bureau chief Bruce Campion-Smith and I) decided to solicit the views of the Quebec NDP caucus on the political future of Quebec and whether they had changed over time and, in particular, provide them with the opportunity to put on the record any past memberships in the Bloc Québécois and other federal or provincial parties.

The goal, as we noted in the questionnaire emailed to the 58 MPs (excluding Interim Leader Nycole Turmel, whose history is now well known), was to gain a better understanding of their perspectives in the hope of sparking a greater discussion on the issue. It was also, obviously, to try and avoid any more surprises like this one.

The exercise resulted in this story, which, to be honest and overly idealistic, was disappointing (although understandable given the heated reaction to the Turmel news, as NDP MP Pat Martin rightfully pointed out). Contrary to what Ottawa-based Le Devoir columnist Manon Corneiller wrote about my story two days before I actually wrote it, I was not on a "witch hunt". I wanted to learn directly from the MPs, and not from some future leak from the Bloc Québécois or some other source with an obvious agenda, where they stood in the past, where they stand now, and hear their explanation for any change of mind.

This is partly because my main issue with Turmel is not that she was a member of a sovereigntist party, or that she was a sovereigntist in the past (especially since, as I discovered while reporting on her role shaping NDP policy on Quebec in the late 1990s, it seems she was not). It is that she did not find that information relevant, even when asked during the election campaign about her 2006 endorsement of Bloc candidates as president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada and appears not to understand just how big a deal that is outside Quebec.

But in a broader way, it was because I believe it is time for an adult conversation about this issue. As a native Quebecer (and a proud one, at that), I do have a grasp of how things are different in Quebec. I am also keenly aware of how many people in the rest of Canada know or understand very little about it. I remember meeting a new co-worker on the first day of my new job in Toronto, who a scant three minutes after we exchanged names asked me if I was a "separatist". I also remember hiking in British Columbia when a man who had just moved there from China told me, in a thick, halting accent, that I spoke "English very good for a lady from Quebec". Don't even get me started on how many times I have had to explain what a CEGEP is.

I have had many, many heated debates with friends who see things I would call grey as either black or white. Through talking about it, we have gained a greater understanding of where the other person is coming from. I do believe there are more people like me out there, and more people like my friends.

As the NDP has been quick to point out, the only way to grow a party in Quebec is to attract voters who have supported sovereignty and may continue to support it now. I agree and I wouldn't even call that an opinion. It's called arithmetic. I think part of that conversation should involve the people at the very centre of this shift in the federal political landscape of Quebec (the MP themselves, who are elected officials, after all) taking the time -- and maybe also a leap of faith -- to talk about their own shifts in thought.

As Robert Asselin, assistant director of the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa, said when I interviewed him for Saturday's story, if the NDP believes it is the new bridge between Quebec and the rest of Canada, then "prove it". Or, at the very least, talk about it.

Even though you passed my deadline and I wrote a story about how you didn't want to talk to me, all is forgiven. Feel free talk about it at any time.

THE QUESTIONNAIRE

Dear New Democrat MP from Quebec:

The Toronto Star is canvassing the Quebec caucus of the Official Opposition on the issue of national unity and the unique political landscape in the province.

We would like learn about and understand more about your views in the hope of sparking a greater discussion on this topic, so please take some time to answer the following questions:

1.       Have you ever been a member of another federal or provincial party? If so, which one?

2.       Are you still a member? If so, when did you join? If not, when did you quit?

3.       Have you ever voted for the Bloc Québécois? If so, why? If not, why not?

4.       Has the Bloc Québécois been good for Quebec?

5.       Would you describe yourself as a sovereigntist, a federalist or something else? Please explain your choice. If you have not always described yourself this way, why not?

6.       Did you vote in the 1980 and/or 1995 referendums on Quebec sovereignty? How did you vote and why?

7.       The Sherbrooke Declaration says the NDP would recognize a majority decision (of 50 per cent plus one) of the Quebec people in the event of a referendum on the political status of Quebec. What do you think this means? Do you agree with it?

Please email your responses to Ottawa Bureau Chief Bruce Campion-Smith and/or reporter Joanna Smith, who covers the NDP in Ottawa.

We would appreciate a response by Wednesday, August 10 at 12 p.m. Eastern Time.

Please feel free to respond in French if you would prefer.

Please do not hesitate to contact either of us with any questions or comments.

AN ASIDE

I want to give credit to those NDP MPs from Quebec who, in less controversial times, have been candid on this issue when I asked them about it.

One of them is Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont--La Petite-Patrie), who voted 'yes' in the 1995 referendum but now considers himself an "autonomiste" who is unconcerned with the national question as he focuses on practical issues like Employment Insurance and pensions. He is also a member of Quebec Solidaire, which champions sovereignty, but explained it is because he is a left-wing union guy and he agrees with their other policies.

Then there is Laurin Liu (Rivière-des-Mille-Îles), who I followed around for a while, who I thought showed some moxy when she explained why she is a federalist:

“I’m a federalist mostly because of my age,” says Liu when asked about how she personally viewed the future of Quebec. “I was born in 1990. I didn’t live through those crises, really, and I’ve always seen Canada as a unified country.”

 

When listening (really listening), is all it takes.

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

UPDATE: A spokeswoman for Citizenship and Immigration Canada said the department is still investigating, but so far it looks like the Canadian Embassy in Paris (which processes medical examination results for the region including Ghana and Nigeria), had technical difficulties uploading the results.

"We’re still investigating what happened, but so far it appears to be an isolated incident, which originated as a technical problem with uploading the medical results in the computer system," spokeswoman Nancy Caron said in an interview Monday (June 6) after once again apologizing for the errors. "So now the mission in Accra is working with the mission in Paris, which handles the medical examinations for the region, to determine the cause of the issue and prevent it from happening again.”

Caron would not comment on why Ekpunobi received the questionnaire about drinking problems.

"It is (a) very personal health question and I would really feel uncomfortable to do that," said Caron, although the couple in question believe the questionnaire was also sent in error.

***

It's always nice for a journalist to hear when a story she was covering ends well for everyone involved.

Two weeks ago I started looking into the case of a Nigerian couple who have been kept apart since they were married in September 2009 because the federal government made a series of costly mistakes while processing their visa application.

Citizenship and Immigration Canada apologized for the errors after my inquiries prompted officials to take a closer look at the case.

On Monday I got a call from the husband, Gideon Christian, who was giddy with the good news that his wife, Isabella Chinelo Ekpunobi, had finally received her visa to join him in Canada when she arrived at the High Commission in Accra, Ghana.

"I am so happy," he said over and over again as he laughed into the telephone.

Ekpunobi is going to hand in her resignation from her job as an in-house lawyer at the Nigerian Television Authority and then join her husband in Ottawa, where he is doing his doctoral studies in law -- something he had seriously thought about abandoning this summer so he could return to Nigeria to get on with his marriage.

The couple hopes to be reunited on Canada Day.

Gideon thanked me personally for helping them out, which something that is always strange for a journalist to hear. I didn't really do anything to help them. I just asked a bunch of questions and wrote down the answers in a way that made for an interesting story.

But really, sometimes that is all the help someone needs when they are up against a faceless bureaucracy that notes their concerns but doesn't really listen or take a step back to notice that something is terribly wrong.

The backlog of unresolved immigration cases is huge. There are an unknown number of stories like the one I told about Gideon and Isabella and yes, it does seem unfair that their case gets resolved so quickly (if nearly 21 months instead of the eight they were told it would take can be considered "quick") just because a reporter starts nosing around.

It would be impossible for every would-be immigrant to Canada to plead their case to the media in this way (and many who do see no quick results anyway). The staff in the office of Liberal MP Mauril Belanger (Ottawa-Vanier) had been making calls on this particular case for months with little progress, even though emails went through the office of Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

But maybe if government officials (both in Ottawa and embassies around the world) tried a little harder to treat case numbers as individual people who deserve to be listened to and given a serious answer when they ask a serious question (such as: "Why are we being asked for medical tests three different times when your own file notes the first request was sent in error?") there would be more stories that end well.

 

What about those NDP candidates? Questions & Answers (sort of) with Jack Layton

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau 

New Democrat Leader Jack Layton was under fire again on Thursday after it was reported that Ruth Ellen Brosseau, the candidate for the Quebec riding of Berthier—Maskinongé, does not speak French very well even though she is running to represent a French-speaking community. Brosseau was already in the news for having chosen to work at a student bar at Carleton University in Ottawa – and then head to Las Vegas on vacation – instead of knocking on doors in the riding. Another Quebec candidate is reportedly off on a trip to France. 

Layton responded to questions about the controversy by saying – repeatedly – that he is proud of his team of candidates and that some people had family plans they could not break. You might read these remarks in the newspaper or hear them on radio or the television, but I would like to give you a better sense of what it was like to be there when Layton was speaking them in Yellowknife, N.W.T. on Thursday. 

The next time you read a line in a news story about a politician deflecting, or outright refusing, to answer a question, you might have a better idea of what that means.

After running through the latest stories about missing candidates, the first reporter wanted his reaction to the new story about Brosseau. The reporter also wanted to know whether Layton was concerned that what happened to Mario Dumont, the former leader of the Action démocratique du Québec (ADQ), when his party unexpectedly grew their caucus from five to 41 seats – becoming the official opposition – in the 2007 provincial election, only to collapse when Quebecers returned to the polls the following year. 

MEDIA: “In Quebec you’ve got a couple of candidates that have some interesting stories. You heard of course about the woman who took her vacation in Vegas now it turns out she doesn’t speak French and she’s running in a riding which is primarily unilingually French. I would like your reaction to that…. Looking at all of these things together, I wonder if you worry at all that once you form your government or your opposition or whatever you get, that people are going to look at the candidates that you brought with you and do what they did to Mario Dumont and get rid of them all later on?”

JACK LAYTON: “I’m very proud of our team. We have the best and strongest team that we have ever presented in a national election and of course the MPs that we elect as our past record shows, tend to be the hardest working, best performing, members of parliament in the house of commons and we expect that is going to continue and the election is going to be about whether people want to choose change or not and it’s going to be up to Canadians, Quebecers, to make that decision. They can vote for change or they can slip back to the old parties that they voted for before, in which case Ottawa won’t get fixed.”  

That answer had some reporters yelling that he had not answered the harder question.

MEDIA: “The change you’re offering is someone who is running in a Quebec riding who doesn’t even speak French. Can you explain how that is a positive choice for people in Quebec?” 

Layton said he was told the accusation was not true.  Then Layton gave a similar response when asked about the missing candidates by a French-speaking reporter. 

LAYTON (translation): “I am very proud of our team. It is the best team that we have ever presented. The question for citizens is to determine will they vote, will they choose change or will they return to the old choices that have left Ottawa spinning its wheels? It is time to clean things up . . . I have said since the beginning that when we don’t have fixed-date elections, it’s very difficult for people who have made plans for their families, but we have a team that is ready to change things in Ottawa. The question for the voters is do they want change, yes or no?” 

That was not good enough for another reporter, who expressed the frustration many of us were feeling. 

MEDIA: “I’m sorry. Mr. Layton? No. I need you to answer that question in a real way. This is a woman who is applying for a job. That is what she is doing here in this election campaign and she has made a decision – as have a number of other candidates – not to show up for parts of the job interview. You made an allegation to Mr. Ignatieff, during the debate, about being absent from work and now you’re putting up candidates who are absent for a job interview. How is that acceptable to you and to Canadians?”

LAYTON:  “I’m extremely proud of our team. This is a hard-working group of people from all backgrounds. Some of them had family plans that couldn’t be changed and I think a lot of Canadians are going to understand that can happen.”

MEDIA: “So then missing a job interview—

LAYTON: “I’ll let you interrupt me as often as you want, but I’ll try to answer as best I can.”

MEDIA: “But you’re not answering the question. That’s why I’m interrupting you.”

LAYTON: “I’m going to try.”

MEDIA: “That’s why I’m interrupting you.”

LAYTON: “Okay fine. So my view is that people are doing their best to represent the views that we have and are putting forward to Canadians and Canadians have a choice when they go into vote on that ballot, it’s a question of whether they want to vote for change or they want to vote for the same old thing that they’ve had in the past.”

MEDIA: “Or for someone who doesn’t show up for their job interview.”

Layton: “Here’s a person who had some family plans that couldn’t be changed. That happens in life. I’m very proud of our team. It’s a hard-working team that is ready to serve.” 

Another reporter tried again.

 MEDIA: “Mr. Layton, my entire family is on a beach right now while I am here covering the election. At least one of the candidates could do the same thing. I am skipping my vacation to be here with you and cover this important national event. Why can’t your candidates do the same thing?”

LAYTON: “Most of them are here. Some had family plans that couldn’t change. I am very proud of this group. This is a hard-working group of people that represents all backgrounds. They are the type of people that you want to have in the House of Commons because they represent the great diversity of our country and if you want to have change, they are the candidates that you are going to want to vote for.”

Olivia Chow defends the women of "Skank TV"

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

New Democrat Olivia Chow decided to show a little skin when she appeared alongside her leader – and husband – Jack Layton on a morning show for the newly launched Sun News Network in Toronto on Thursday morning.

Chow, the incumbent NDP candidate in the Toronto riding of Trinity-Spadina, began the hour-long live broadcast wearing a blazer over her sleeveless dress, but something had changed when the show returned from a commercial break.

Chow and co-host Alex Pierson had both ditched the jackets that had been concealing their bare shoulders and arms.

The national media travelling with the NDP campaign noticed the summery wardrobe change right away. After all, what female anchors wear at the controversial new network has been the subject of gossip since it launched on Monday.

Pierson noticed too.

“A curious thing happened on the break. You took your jacket off because you saw that I wasn’t wearing a jacket and I thought this is a funny kind of thing, because the women here of this network, have been – how do I say it? – well, we’ve been beaten up quite a lot about our appearance,” Pierson said.

The morning show host then mentioned a tweet – since deleted – from Maclean’s Washington, D.C. bureau chief Luiza Ch. Savage in which she referred to Sun News as “Skank TV” when expressing her agreement with a column by Tasha Kheiriddin in the National Post.

 
 

Savage has since retracted her use of the word, saying on Twitter: “I did not intend to disparage or insult any individual/s”, then adding in a subsequent tweet that she still agreed with Kheiriddin.

“I want to know, as a woman, what do you think of a comment like this?” Pierson asked Chow. “You are in the spotlight and apparently if you, I guess present yourself like this… Are you a ‘skank’ if you dress like this?”

“Hang on a minute. This is my member of Parliament!” Layton cried out, adding that she was also gorgeous.

Pierson said that was the point she was trying to make.

“Exactly,” she said. “I would think if they were saying it to me, they might as well be saying it to you.”

Chow started laughing and then said it reminded her of when Megan Leslie, the NDP incumbent for Halifax, was scolded (by Conservative Diane Finley) for wearing capped sleeves in the House of Commons, to which she organized a protest among her female colleagues on Parliament Hill.

“This (was) in the middle of summer,” Chow said. “It was quite warm, so she rallied all her female colleagues with the ‘right to bare arms’ and what’s wrong with it? This whole emphasis on peoples’ appearance rather than looking at what we believe in, what we stand for, no wonder the House of Commons only have 22 per cent female MPs.”

Chow later told reporters she intentionally removed her jacket to make the point.

“I did it deliberately to talk about the importance of getting more women in the House of Commons,” she said in the lobby of the Sun News headquarters in Toronto on Thursday.

Another curious thing also happened during this portion of the interview. As Chow was saying that she spent some time on Wednesday with Equal Voice, a non-partisan advocacy group calling for more female representation in politics, Layton cut her off to boast about the NDP setting a Canadian record because 40 per cent of its candidates this election are women.

“That’s still not good enough, but it’s the best ever in Canadian history, and we’re going to keep working until we have 50 per cent plus in the House of Commons,” Layton said.

I later asked Layton why he didn’t just let Chow continue answering the question – especially since it was about women’s issues – the married couple both joked about cutting each other off.

“We sometimes finish each other’s sentences. Olivia’s made that point a lot,” Layton said.

“No, usually I’m the one jumping in,” Chow jumped in from the sidelines, which got a big laugh from Layton.

“Yeah, that was a bit of a switch,” he said.

Liberal "protester" at Jack Layton appearance not just another face in the crowd

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

As the New Democrat campaign bus pulled up at the East Coast Music Awards in Charlottetown, P.E.I. on Friday afternoon, media on the bus noticed a guy holding up a sign for Sean Casey, the Liberal candidate in running to replace retired Liberal MP Shawn Murphy in the Charlottetown riding. The NDP candidate is Joe Byrne and te Conservative is Donna Profit.

"Look, it's a Liberal protester!" someone on the bus joked, for it would be hard to describe the quiet, slightly dishevelled man in shades and a white baseball cap standing alone in the corner as a demonstration. "Maybe it's Sean Casey?"

As I soon discovered on Twitter while trying to find out whether anyone at the East Coast Music Awards had noticed NDP Leader Jack Layton was there, the lone protester ended up being none other than Ashley MacIsaac, the renowned and colourful fiddler from Cape Breton, N.S.

A couple of my reporter colleagues managed to catch up with him later and learned that while he had some nice things to say about Layton, including that some of his favourite MPs belong to the NDP, he is a Liberal supporter. One of his songs, Wingstock, has even been playing at campaign rallies for Michael Ignatieff.

Later on in Seven Mile Bay, P.E.I., Layton was asked about MacIsaac.

"The last thing I’ll do is comment on Ashley MacIsaac. I’ve shared stages with him and he’s a character, that’s for sure and a fun guy and I love him when he’s got his fiddle on the go," Layton said, adding that he performed for a fundraiser Layton was part of years ago in Toronto.

"I’ve got a special place in my heart for him. Sorry I didn’t get to bump into him and talk to him while he was there," said Layton.

Had Layton been paying closer attention to the man carrying the Liberal sign as he made his way into the hotel hosting the awards, he might have realized that he very nearly did bump into him.

Bollywood movie star shines light on Harper's bid for re-election

Posted by Allan Woods Ottawa Bureau

BRAMPTON – Prime Minister Stephen Harper popped out of his campaign bubble, linked arms with a movie star and went pitching for South Asian votes in a movie theatre Friday.

The reviews won’t be out until May 2, but the Conservative leader appears to have done himself some favours by showing up for the premier of Bollywood star Akshay Kumar’s latest film, Thank You, a comedy about adulterous spouses.

Kumar and Harper pulled up to the event in the riding of Liberal incumbent Ruby Dhalla on the Tory campaign bus, which played Indian music through loudspeakers. Harper had just released his platform, entitled “Here for Canada.” But it appeared the crowed was here for Kumar, who splits his time between India and Canada.

“We weren’t sure what was really going on,” said one woman seated inside the theatre.

Still, Harper may have done his party some good for showing up.

“I think it’s a great way to get the local community. And it’s smart, especially in an ethnic area, using (Kumar),” said her friend, who noted she would be voting Conservative in the election even if the Prime Minister hadn’t shown up.

In a short address to the crowd just before the movie started, Harper was recognized for building better relations between Canada and India and for signing a film co-production treaty between the two countries.

Some even credited the Tories for bringing the India Film Awards, the Bollywood equivalent of the Oscars, to Toronto this summer, even though the Ontario government is hosting the event.

Vicky Sharma and Del Smadder heard Kumar was coming to the premiere a few days ago on the radio and rushed out to get advance tickets. Harper’s presence was a big surprise.

Sharma says her election support is “still up in the air.” Smadder’s mind was made up for him Friday.

“Since (Harper’s) here, my vote goes to him now,” he said.

That could be the deciding factor for quite a few of the movie fans who turned out Friday.

“The fact that they saw him walking beside Akshay Kumar, that changes everything,” Smadder said.

Harper toned down his political rhetoric for the event, leaving behind his stump speech about the Liberal-NDP-Bloc Quebecois plot to overthrow any election result. Instead, he noted that both he and the film star met their wives in Alberta, and said that in a job filled with great responsibility and great perks, this would be among the greatest.

“This is the first time in my life I’ve got to do one of the things I like doing most, which is to … sit and watch a movie with the start of the movie, one of the biggest stars in the world.”

The crowd went wild with applause, Laureen Harper did a little dance with Kumar at the front of the theatre and the movie began.

A few minutes later, the Conservative leader’s bus pulled out of the Brampton parking lot, bound for his next stop on the road to re-election.

From the email inbox: a closer look at a Guelph veterinary student and what the blogosphere is saying about him.

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

On Thursday Wednesday night I received an email from a reader named Catherine McMillan, who let me know that a blogger had found some stuff on the Internet about Izzy Hirji, the 22-year-old veterinary student at the University of Guelph I featured in my story on youth engagement in politics on Wednesday.

“I figure you should know that a blogger in Winnipeg has done the background work you didn’t bother with on a source you featured today in your Star piece,” McMillan wrote in the email copied to our public editor, Kathy English, who received a few more emails on the topic around the same time.

McMillan linked this post by a blog called The Black Rod, apparently run by a group of anonymous citizen journalists (more on that later).

The post details some things Hirji has posted on Facebook over the years, including one from 2006 (apparently since deleted) that McMillan included in her email to me:

"...stephen harpers plan is ridiculous, 40 years without results, and death to Kyoto!?!?!?! OMGWTF im ready to like go to Ottawa myself an take him down..."

UPDATE: Sean Ledwich, a freelance journalist in Winnipeg, notes the original Facebook post included an "lol" at the end, presumably to indicate Hirji was joking (which is an important bit of context). The Black Rod left that out, but referred to it later on in the post and McMillan included a screen shot in her post on the subject. It appeared Thursday night the original Facebook comment had been deleted, but Ledwich found it in a Google cache result on Friday.

“Perhaps less time on Twitter, and more on Google, yes?” wrote McMillan, the woman behind a popular conservative blog called small dead animals, where she is known as Kate.

Now, here’s the thing: according to both the story that ran in the Guelph Mercury and my own interview with Hirji on Tuesday (where he confirmed all those details in his answers to questions I asked over and over again), Conservative party organizers asked him to leave the rally for Stephen Harper at the Delta Guelph Hotel on Monday because he had participated in the peaceful get-out-the-youth-vote flash mob outside, which they viewed as a protest. Hirji said RCMP Cpl. Tony Fowler of the “O” Division/VIP Security Section told him the same thing as he was reinforcing the Conservative party request that he leave the venue. Hirji said he had pre-registered online (as the rally was advertised as a public event in the Guelph Mercury), but his name was on the list at the hotel and he was let in without a problem – until the party official recognized his face from the flash mob.

“The people who did take me out, it wasn’t because I was a security threat,” Hirji said when I spoke to him again Thursday. “It’s because they saw our student rally as a protest.”

In other words, according to his version of events (and neither the RCMP, the Conservative party or Harper has contradicted it), something he wrote on Facebook in 2006 or anything else The Black Rod found on Google was not the reason he was kicked out.

And, let’s remember, the RCMP said Wednesday it overstepped its bounds and Harper has also apologized to everyone who was kicked out of his rallies.

Still, I had some extra time today and since I honestly do enjoy interacting with and learning from readers (one of the reasons I am so enthusiastic about Twitter), I decided to take a closer look. Instead of turning to Google (because the bloggers had that covered), I picked up the telephone.

My first call was to McMillan, as she was the one who had reached out to me first. I wanted to get a better idea of where she was coming from, given everything I and my colleagues had learned while reporting the different aspects of this rally story.

“I call it journalistic malpractice,” McMillan told me on the phone from Saskatchewan Thursday.

“I think you have to go back and look at the facts,” said McMillan, who throughout our conversation referred to Hirji and other flash-mob organizers as Green Party activists based on what The Black Rod had included in the post. “It isn’t a debate about this perception versus that perception. It was a report on an event and I think that when you quote someone who just happened to be there and just happened to get thrown out as thought he’s a non-partisan student who just wanted to go see the prime minister, it’s a little bit disingenuous when that’s obviously not who he was, not who he is…

“We see this all the time as bloggers, you know,” said McMillan. “For example, there will be a Liberal party meeting in Manitoba and they’ll quote an independent farmer and we Google the guy up and he’s the riding president. You know, this is a repeated pattern, which is why it gets jumped on so much by bloggers, because we see this over and over and over and over again, where people are quoted. Their story is taken without any investigation as to who they really are and it’s all so easy to do now. We’re picking this stuff up in five minutes.”

For the record, I had asked Hirji if he was a member of a political party when I first spoke to him on Tuesday. He told me he had joined the Green Party but couldn’t remember if he had renewed his membership. It was clear from the Facebook page advertising the event and the videos that the flash mob was billed – and executed – as a positive, non-partisan event, where political signs were forbidden and the crowd was ordered to sit down and boo anyone shouting political slogans. The Facebook page advertising the event also featured a comment from at least one member of the Guelph Campus Conservatives, who was told he was welcome to show up, although I could not confirm whether any of its roughly150 members did. So, I figured his possibly lapsed Green party membership was irrelevant in a piece that was more about youth engagement in democracy than the details of what happened to Hirji, which had already been widely reported. I’m pretty sure it’s not something the RCMP would have viewed as a security threat. Asking another student to leave a Conservative rally in London, Ont. because she had posed for a photo with Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff certainly didn’t go over so well. In hindsight, should I have mentioned this? I don’t think it would have satisfied McMillan, who argued the flash mob itself – quite apart from the five-year-old Facebook comment – was inherently dangerous.

“One of these may end up with a group of so-called anarchists in their midst and the whole premise of what they’re doing has inherent dangers,” McMillan said, although she added that of course she could not speak for what the Conservative party and the RCMP did or did not view as a security threat.

Security was the main issue for The Black Rod too, said a “designated spokesman” for the blog I was asked to call in Winnipeg on Thursday afternoon who refused to give his name.

(“Is this speed dating? You want a name? You’re not getting one,” the deep, male-sounding voice said on the phone when I pressed for some identity, stressing that speaking to people without any name was not particularly sound journalistic practice, especially since this whole exercise was a response to my being admonished for not entering a name into Google. I warned that readers would therefore have to take his words with a grain of salt and he said “Please! They can take it with a mound of salt.” So, readers, there you go.)

“There is a thread that runs through this,” the anonymous designated spokesman said, which begins with the Facebook post in 2006. “Do you call it a threat? In hindsight you can look at it and say was that a threat? Well, maybe not, but had he pulled out a gun and shot somebody, then it would have been a threat.”

The anonymous designated spokesman went through the other items listed on The Black Rod, including a November 2009 environment-related “strip mob” in Guelph associated with one of the organizers of the Monday “vote mob”, an event that Hirji noted on Facebook he could not partake in because he had class.

“So if you’re a security official, you look at this and go ‘Okay, what’s the plan? A publicity stunt inside? Are they going to take off their clothes?” the anonymous designated spokesman said, later linking the flash mob to the environmental movement at large, with the risk of anarchists breaking off and smashing windows like they did during the G20 Summit in Toronto last summer. “You just simply say: ‘Let’s err on the side of caution.’”

“Well, no, it didn’t happen in this case. But it could have,” the anonymous designated spokesman said.

Now, what I found interesting about my conversation with the anonymous designated spokesman for The Black Rod was that he fully believed the RCMP removed Hirji because of the stuff he had been able to find on Google, fully expected the RCMP to run the list of attendees through Google and remove people based on what they find and, even more interesting, was fully okay with that happening in Canadian democracy.

I’m going to give last word to Hirji.

“I do acknowledge the validity in what they’re posting, but I mean, to dig up something from six years ago when I was a teenager and spewing angry comments at my government, that has nothing to do with my professional conduct as a voter right now,” Hirji said Thursday. “Yeah, sure, I’ve attended a Harper protest before, but that doesn’t make me a protester every time that I want to engage in a political event.”

Actually, I’m going to give the last word to Ray Novak, a long-time aide to Harper, who posted a photo on Twitter Thursday evening, with this as the caption: “PM meets with student pro-vote activists after Hamilton rally.”

Ready, set, Google.

 

Tories aren't behind riding's sign war

posted by Allan Woods, Ottawa Bureau

Campaign sabotage, such as the crosshairs painted over an Ottawa Liberal candidate’s election signs, is unacceptable, Conservative leader Stephen Harper says.

Liberal Ryan Keon’s campaign for the riding of Nepean-Carleton reported over the weekend that 100 signs had been vandalized at a cost of about $2,000. A number of them had targets spraypainted over the candidate’s face. Others claimed he was a “tree hugger” or sought to revive the memory of the Liberal sponsorship scandal with the words “ad scam.”

Conservative Pierre Poilievre was re-elected in 2008 by a 22,000 vote margin over his closest oppoent, a Liberal.

Harper said the vandalism could never have been perpetrated by members of his own party, because they’re way too busy.

“Defacing of other candidates’ signs is never acceptable for any campaign,” Harper said at a campaign stop Sunday. “Our campaign does not have the time to do that. We’ve got enough to do to get our own signs up because we’ve got lots of demand for signs all across the country.”

After the Conservative leader’s morning event, he did venture into Poilievre’s riding. But it wasn’t to console the Liberal victim of the attack. Harper chose instead to partake in a 20-minute game of street hockey, a photo-opportunity to promote his promise to expand a tax credit encouraging youth to take part in physical activity.

Nevermind that there would be no tax relief for parents whose children dodge cars all summer while imitating their NHL favourites.

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