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.

 

Things that make you go, 'Quoi?'

By Allan Woods, Ottawa Bureau

VAUGHAN – Former police chief Julian Fantino, the Conservative incumbent in Vaughan, offered the latest offering to the department of things that make you go, ‘Duh!’

Introducing Tory leader Stephen Harper at an event in his riding Thursday, Fantino shared one of his many irritations with life in the House of Commons. In addition to Liberals and those opposing tougher laws to crack down on crime (also Liberals), one of the things that really gets under Fantion’s skin is the refusal by Bloc Quebecois MPs to gather each Wednesday to sing the national anthem.

“The Bloc are absent consistently, and if the odd one’s in there when the national anthem is struck then they seem to leave,” he told reporters later. “I find that very strange. I don’t know why. Obviously they have their own reasons.”

The Bloc Quebecois was formed in 1991 to advance the cause at the federal level of sovereignist lawmakers in the province. Namely, they want to separate from Canada and form an independent nation.

That would seem a pretty good reason not to sing O’ Canada, non?.

 

 

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.

-30-

 

Guelph Tory candidate reacts to Star story

Posted by Allan Woods, Ottawa Bureau

A Toronto Star story I published Friday about Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke raised some dust in the riding.

Burke's campaign and the party's central war room in Ottawa wouldn't respond to my repeated requests for an explanation about his assertion in 2004 that the Afghan mission was "near worthless" days.

But he did get back to the Star's sister paper, the Guelph Mercury with a statement that they included in a follow-up story.

Apparently his beef was with former Liberal prime minister Paul Martin's government sending Canadian troops to Afghanistan without the proper equipment. One can understand how this would strike a nerve with the air force officer-turned-Air Canada-pilot-turned-Tory candidate.

He didn't, however, explain his complaints about the appointment in 2005 of Governor General Michaelle Jean and why he was so upset that another female, immigrant, visible minority was being named to the post following Adrienne Clarkson.

Burke's opponents in the riding weren't so convinced with Burke's explanation, accusing him of being whipped into supporting the official party lines.

But It seems Prime Minister Stephen Harper is fine with his candidate being off-side with the party's policies and positions at the time. The Conservative leader plans to land in the Guelph riding, where they hope to unseat Liberal MP Frank Valeriote, on Monday evening.

I'll be there and I'll report back how things go.

Day 7: Layton in Sudbury to talk about health care; will have to talk about the gun registry

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

Good morning from Sudbury, where New Democrat Leader Jack Layton will begin the day by doing some radio interviews, including a morning talk show with with local country music station Kicx FM. Expect the debate over the gun registry to be a hot topic.

NDP candidate Glenn Thibeault took the seat from former Liberal MP Diane Marleau in the 2008 election, but this riding looks like a three-way race and Thibeault could be vulnerable. Thibeault was initially one of the dozen NDP MPs who supported Conservative Candice Hoeppner's private member bill to scrap the long-gun registry, but then switched  sides for the final vote that shut down that Conservative dream. NDP incumbent Claude Gravelle (Nickel Belt) did the same thing but with 46.5 per cent of the vote in 2008 he might be in less trouble. Nonetheless, both Thibeault and Gravelle will join Layton as he visits the Sudbury riding for some support. They will be joined by Wendy Wilson, the NDP candidate running against Conservative cabinet minister Tony Clement in Parry Sound-Muskoka.

Layton will then make announcement concerning health care at Laurentian University at 9:30 a.m.

Expect a proposal to train and hire 1,200 doctors and 6,000 nurses, which was one of the things Layton demanded from Harper in the failed federal budget. It was also a 2008 NDP campaign proposal. So was a plan to reduce the student debt of health professionals who practiced family medicine for at least a decade. Given most of the campaign promises Layton has made so far are recycled, it is a good bet that forgiving student debt for family doctors will be in there too.

Another clue: I recall Layton made this promise at an event at the Dalhousie University medical school in Halifax when I was travelling with the campaign in 2008. Laurentian University, where we will be this morning, is home of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine, a joint initiative with Lakehead University in Thunder Bay. If the NDP handlers line up a bunch of med students in white coats to stand behind Layton as he makes his speech, then I will know for sure.

At 2 p.m. there will be a "town hall" meeting, the first event of its kind for the Layton campaign this year. I will be watching for whether the people that show up and the questions they ask are scripted.

 

 

NDP releases television ad attacking Harper's record on health care

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

The New Democrats released a television ad attacking Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's record on health care, which they say will begin airing Tuesday during popular programs including American Idol, Dr. Phil and morning news show Canada AM.

The first NDP ad in this election campaign features an animated doctor pushing a patient on a stretcher into a doughnut shop, referencing a Globe and Mail story from earlier this month about how the emergency room at Royal Columbian Hospital in New Westminster, B.C. is dealing with its overflow of patients by moving some of them to the adjacent coffee shop.

It gets even more crowded when an animated Harper pops up and the narrator explains that the Conservative plan to train 100 doctors means one family physician for every 50,000 patients that need one.

(The Conservative government announced last month it would provide $40 million over four years to create 100 new training positions for medical students in rural areas, in the hopes they would stay there and provide family physicians to remote and under-serviced communities. So the ad )

The ad then loses its cartoonish tone and cuts to NDP Leader Jack Layton sitting in front of a Canadian flag, promising to make things better.

The NDP says the spot will form part of the largest advertising campaign in party history, although officials would not release any figures beyond saying they are running a fully funded $23 million campaign.

When asked about the ad, Layton said little except that the NDP will make health care a major issue in this campaign.

Layton said he does not trust Harper to negotiate the 2014 Health Accord with provinces and territories, which will determine how the federal government funds health care for a decade.

"I don’t trust him to negotiate those arrangements," Layton told reporters at a campaign stop in Kitchener, Ont. on Tuesday. "I don’t think he fundamentally believes in how our public health care system needs to be developed and supported and expanded and improved for Canadians, so we’re putting a major focus on that issue in this campaign for sure.”

Bloc slogan: Let's talk about ... sex?

Posted By Andrew Chung, Quebec Bureau

It’s probably safe to say that Bloc Québécois leader Gilles Duceppe doesn’t have the American female rap trio Salt-n-Pepa on “repeat.”

But their 1991 hit song, “Let’s Talk About Sex,” is inadvertently finding an echo in his campaign.

On Monday Duceppe unveiled his campaign slogan, “Parlons Qc.” It’s supposed to be a clever way of saying, “Let’s talk about Quebec.”

And he revealed his campaign themes. Let’s talk about “solidarity,” “fair share,” “truth,” and the like.

But shortly after the “Parlons Qc” was revealed, including on the Bloc’s now ubiquitous placards and in huge letters on Duceppe’s campaign bus, radio personalities and others were dropping the “c” in “Qc.”

“Parlons Q” in French sounds like "Parlons cul," or, “Let’s talk about sex.”

"Cul” is a slang term meaning “a--.” But it can also mean sex.

“I don’t know who the members of the test group are who liked it, but they need to be erased from the list of future call backs,” wrote Jean-François Lisée on his blog for the news magazine L'actualité.

“It was perfectly predictable.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper had his own critique of the slogan, reportedly saying in Regina, “With the Bloc it’s talk and talk.”

“The Conservative Party is looking to include Quebecers of all regions in power. That’s the difference,” he added.

 

A trip down memory lane: the Sheraton Guildford Hotel in Surrey, B.C.

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

As the NDP bus pulled into the parking lot of the Sheraton Guildford Hotel in Surrey, B.C. on Sunday morning, it triggered the memory of one of its passengers.

CBC Radio reporter James Cudmore realized he was at this same hotel on September 23, 2008, the last time Canada was involved in a general election campaign.

Conservative Leader Stephen Harper and his national tour swung by this same hotel that evening for a rally of party faithful, where Harper was joined on stage by local candidates. One of those candidates was Dona Cadman, who went on to win the election for the riding of Surrey North (where the hotel is located).

Cadman had been in the news a lot that year, and not just because she was running for the Conservatives in Surrey North, the seat her late husband Chuck Cadman held from 1997 (first for Reform, then the Canadian Alliance, then as an Independent) until his death from cancer in 2005. As mentioned in my previous blog post about why the NDP is hitting up this riding today, 2008 was the year of the Chuck Cadman affair and the question of whether or not the Conservatives had offered Cadman a million-dollar life insurance policy in exchange for voting against the 2005 budget put forward by the Liberal minority government of Paul Martin.

Anyway, Dona Cadman had managed to avoid the media that whole summer, so when the national media showed up at the Conservative event in her riding and saw her on stage with Harper, they naturally wanted to ask her some questions.

That did not happen, as my CBC colleague recalled.

The RCMP actually blocked the media from approaching the Conservative candidate, with one Harper aide ordering the Mounties to keep them away.

Here is how the Toronto Star recounted the episode in a story two days later recounting the many ways in which Harper was dealing (or not dealing) with the media on his 2008 campaign:

Tensions peaked Tuesday night in Surrey, B.C., when Conservatives called on the RCMP to shield Harper and local candidate Dona Cadman after a partisan rally.

Cadman, a candidate in Surrey North, has been mum since alleging months ago that top party officials offered her dying husband, independent MP Chuck Cadman, a $1 million life-insurance policy if he would cast his vote to topple the former Paul Martin Liberal government in May 2005.

When reporters tried to speak to Cadman this week, Harper's staff ordered the RCMP to block journalists, and she was whisked away.

"Keep them out!" an aide shouted to the police officers.

Harper spokesperson Kory Teneycke said there was no need for the national media to interview local candidates. "Local candidates' priority is in the local ridings and not talking to the national media," he said.

RCMP spokesperson Sgt. Sylvie Tremblay denied any interference.

"In no way were the officers assigned to protect the Prime Minister attempting to interfere with journalists trying to interview Ms. Cadman," she wrote in an email yesterday, explaining they were just trying to make sure Harper was able to leave the area safely.

But Harper had already left when it happened.

(The headline, which I believe was suggested by my Toronto Star colleague Richard Brennan, or the "Badger", was: Harper a man who 'lives in a bubble').

Day 2 of the NDP campaign targets another Conservative riding

Posted by Joanna Smith, Ottawa Bureau

Good morning! While the other leaders have already started their days in Quebec, the NDP tour is three time zones away in Vancouver, B.C. and just beginning to have breakfast. Don't call us lazy, though! Our bus only pulled into the hotel well after the rest of the media had gone to bed.

Here is what is on the agenda (and what's at stake) for the NDP tour today:

New Democrat Leader Jack Layton begins the second day of his campaign in Surrey, B.C., where he will once again argue that voting for the NDP means defeating Conservatives. The riding in question? Surrey North, one of those Blue vs. Orange electoral districts where that argument actually makes sense.

So, again, let's take a look at the numbers:

In 2008, Conservative Dona Cadman received 13,714 votes, representing 39.4 per cent of the ballots. NDP candidate Rachid Arab received 12,608 votes, representing 36.2 per cent. Liberal candidate Marc Muhammad received 5,227 votes, or 15 per cent, and Green Party candidate got 1,925 votes, or 5.5 per cent. That means Cadman won by just 1,106 votes.

Now, that result is close enough to make this an interesting race all on its own, but here are some more facts and numbers about Surrey North that show exactly why the NDP is so keen on winning this riding.

In 2006, NDP candidate Penny Priddy won by a landslide, with 16,307 votes (or 45.7 per cent). Conservative candidate David Matta placed a distant second at 9,864 votes, or 27.7 per cent, with Liberal candidate Surjit Kooner coming third with 6,991 votes (19.6 per cent) and the Green Party candidate getting fewer than 1,000.

What happened between those two elections? Well, let's take a look at what happened before them.

The  late Chuck Cadman held the riding for a long time. He was first elected as a Reform MP in 1997, then again as a Canadian Alliance MP in 2000. Then the new Conservative Party of Canada was born and Cadman lost the nomination. So, he ran as an Independent (about a month after he was diagnosed with cancer and underwent surgery to remove a tumour) and won. If you're reading a blog post about polling numbers then you are probably already intimately familiar with the dramatic role Cadman played in the 2005 budget vote (no, it wasn't all about Belinda!), his subsequent losing the battle to cancer and then that whole scandal about whether or not Stephen Harper and his entourage offered him a life insurance policy to vote with the Conservatives.

So, Priddy took it for the NDP in 2006, but then announced she would not run again in 2008. Guess who the Conservatives chose to run in Surrey North that year? You already know the answer: Dona Cadman, whose husband was the late Chuck Cadman. She won, but as mentioned above, by just 1,106 votes and the NDP believes this riding is very much in play.

So, that is why we are here today, with Layton about to tell supporters and then local business owners that New Democrats beat Conservatives. We'll see.

'Ordinary' Canadians and the dark arts of politics

Posted by Allan Woods

Campaigning politicians go to great lengths to connect with so-called ordinary Canadians in a federal election. But the logistics and planning, as well as the risks involved in putting a party leader in front of an unscreened, non-partisan public keep organizers awake at night. 

Those ordinary Canadians could be indifferent. They could be hostile. They could jeopardize the all-important photo-opportunity and leave a campaign reeling. So parties parties try to make it appear as though voters are coming their way en masse. It is a sort of political peer pressure.

Conservative leader Stephen Harper, the one with the broadest base of support so far among the four parties, is keen so far on television advertisements that feature him and him alone. 

The obvious message is that the Tories bring strong leadership in a time of uncertainty. In past campaigns, he's also used paid actors.

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff's approach in his first election as leader is that he's not afraid of taking his pitch directly to average Canadians. 

He's promised the type of unscripted, almost improvisational, campaign events that haven't been seen since Robert Stanfield's fumbled football.

 

Ignatieff's first round of ads, released Saturday, are aimed at the all-important "ethnic vote," but they fall short of that lofty bar.

An advisory to reporters following the campaign says: "The advertisements will feature ordinary Canadians speaking in a variety of languages -- including Urdu, Hindi, Cantonese and Mandarin."

One is in Punjabi. Here's the rundown and brief translation from my colleague Raveena Aulakh:

One man says that since the Conservative government came to power, “the country has been sinking.” Another man says Prime Minister Stephen Harper has put Canada into a debt while a third, a suave man in a goatee, complains that the Conservative government is giving tax cuts to big corporations and banks but nothing to ordinary people. 

 The advertisement wraps up with a voice saying: “I like Michael Ignatieff because he is smart and he listens to us.” 

The other is in Portuguese. The Star's Christine Loureiro was the first of several colleagues in Toronto to provide a full transcript:

NARRATOR: Canadians have a lot to say about Stephen Harper.

MAN 1: The Conservatives promised responsibility but were caught in an illegal election financing scheme.

WOMAN 1: Stephen Harper is cutting taxes for big banks and big corporations and not giving us a thing.

NARRATOR: You have a choice. Michael Ignatieff and the Liberals will invest in things that are important to Canadian families.

WOMAN 1: I like Michael Ignatieff. He's intelligent and he listens to us.

NARRATOR: Vote Liberal in these elections. 

There must be a remote chance that a bunch of "ordinary Canadians" from two different ethnic communities would have the word-for-word same take on the Liberal leader. Still, it seems likely that Ignatieff, too, is working from a script, and just as likely that the other rounds of ethnic ads will feature the same endorsement of an "intelligent" party leader. 

(As an aside, I'd be surprised if the Liberals played up Ignatieff's book smarts, and by extension his long stretch away from Canada as a Harvard human rights professor in English or French ads, playing into the Conservative's charge that he's an elitist outsider who only came back to Canada to fulfill his ego in politics.)

I've asked party officials and they've yet to respond with a request for the names of these ordinary folks who appear in Saturday's videos. I'll let you know when I hear back from them.

But if history is any guide, there's a good chance the people who appear in these ads are declared Liberals, probably squirrelled away in campaign offices across the country, working to get their candidate elected. 

Case in point: One night in Thunder Bay, where I was travelling with Harper during the 2006 election, I happened upon a batch of Liberal television ads that featured people speaking out in support of then-prime minister Paul Martin's re-election.

The only problem was that these average Canadians happened to be the brother of Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla, the executive director of the Saskatchewan Liberal Party, and a British Columbia riding association president.

When I checked a few letters to the editor that were explicitly hostile to the Tories, or favourable to the Liberals I found letters from the former national director of Liberal youth wing and a former speech writer for Liberal cabinet minister Anne McLellan. None of them had declared their partisan leanings.

Harper told me the next day that it didn't surprise him to see Liberals posing as average Joes and Janes.

"I suspect for most of the Liberal campaign, if it isn't groups that are linked to the government, or linked to the party, I think they'll have a lot of trouble finding anybody to support some of their policies," he said.

To be fair, Harper couldn't say for certain that his party hadn't done the same thing, and once in power the Conservatives urged supporters on its website to make their views known to newspapers, call-in radio shows and any other forums that would publish or broadcast their views.

So remember this: Swaying public opinion is a dark and sometimes devious political art, despite the high calling of federal politics. I would urge skepticism and hope against cynicism as you, the voting public, are bombarded with the waves of ads and commentary coming your way over the next five weeks leading up to the May 2 election.