As part of the Marquee program, various festivals received larger amounts in funding. There are a number of Marquee festivals and events in Canada and $100m has been allocated over the two years of the program to boost them. As a Tier One festival (i.e. with attendance of more than 250,000) Pride Toronto qualified for 20% of last year’s expenditure budget up to a maximum of $3m. The figure of $397,500 constitutes 20% of the 2008 festival budget and this was the criteria for the program. Significant funds are needed to achieve enhancements that will substantially increase attractiveness to tourists, and all funding was allocated specifically for enhancements that encourage tourism. It was understood from the outset that the program would be managed by Industry Canada.

Pride Toronto is thrilled to have been able to participate in this program and we believe that the recent success of the festival shows that the funding was justified and the expenditure will prove to be worthwhile. As for the issues surrounding Minister Ablonczy, we have no ability to comment on the workings of government. We appreciate the Minister’s time and attention to this issue, and we wish her well at all times.

Pride Toronto in response to MP Brad Trost (C- Saskatoon-Humboldt) at Lifesite News.

“The pro-life and the pro-family community should know and understand that the tourism funding money that went to the gay pride parade in Toronto was not government policy, was not supported by – I think it’s safe to say by a large majority – of the MPs. This was a very isolated decision.”

The Toronto parade is in it’s 29th year. Macleans Magazine looks at the Conservative claims of fund allocation shifting from The Ministry of Small Business and Tourism to Industry. Applications for summer festival funding closed May8th. Diane Ablonczy’s name is still on the applications for Small Business and Tourism.  The Marquee Event Funding Program is part of the January federal economic stimulus package.  The spokesman for Industry Minister Tony Clement now says Ablonczy’s office wasn’t equipped to handle the 100 million dollar program.

David Aiken says out of 12 Conservative MP’s contacted only two would go on record.

“It’s a tourism event, like any other tourism event,” said Calgary Conservative MP Lee Richardson. “It attracts as many people in Toronto as the Molson Indy.”

Dona Cadman, a first-term Conservative MP from Surrey, B.C., said she supports Ms. Ablonczy’s decision.

“I’m proud to see this reaching out to all sectors of the Canadian mosaic,” Cadman said in an e-mailed message.

Charles McVety made an issue out of this two weeks ago.
McVety=Campaign Life=LifeSite

 Diane Ablonczy C- Calgary Nose-Hill

Who is blogging?

Montreal Simon: The Bigot Burning of Diane Ablonczy
Accidental Deliberation: Irresponsible
BigCityLib:  Has Diane Ablonczy Been Demoted For Being Too Gay Friendly?
Canadian Soapbox: Harperites Object to Money Offered Providing Homosexuals Or Bisexuals with Equal Status
Impolitical:  Governing Ugly
Baptist Potluck: Another reason to pray for PM Harper

Liberal Arts and Minds:  Think the Religious Right Has No Voice in Government?
The Galloping Beaver: The Reform Party Long Knives seem to be out
God Keep Our Land: Good on you Brad

Below the fold: The gay, lesbian and bisexual events funded by the federal government including in Brad Trosts area.

Saskatoon Star Phoenix – The Saskatoon Diversity Network received $9,000 from Canadian Heritage this year for last June’s Pride Festival.
David Akin’s On the Hill:

• Recipient: Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives
  Minister: Hon. James Moore
  Funding received – $175,000.00
  Purpose: Arts in Communities
  Date: 2009-03-26
• Recipient: Vancouver Out on Screen Film and Video Society, Vancouver, British Colombia
  Minister: Hon. Josée Verner
  Funding received: $32,000.00
  Purpose: Project: 20th Anniversary Vancouver Queer Film Festival, Programming
  Date: 2008-2009, March 4, 2008
• Recipient: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transgender Pride Toronto
  Funding received: $21,000.00
  Date: ** Last modified, 2008-02-19
• Recipient: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, and Transgenderal Pride Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  Minister: Hon. Josée Verner
  Funding received: $35,000.00
  Purpose: Arts in Community
  Date: 2007-04-23
• Recipient: Inside Out Lesbian & Gay Film Festival Inc. Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  Funding received: $20,000.00
  Purpose: Project: Toronto Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival, Programming
  Date: 2008-2009
• Recipient: Winnipeg Gay & Lesbian Film Society Inc, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
  Funding received: 4,000.00
  Purpose: Project: Reel Pride Film Festival, Programming
  Date: 2008-2009
• Recipient: Reelout Arts Project Inc., Kingston, Ontario, Canada
  Funding received: $7,000.00
  Purpose: Project: Reelout Queer Film & Video Festival, Programming
  Date: 2008-2009
• Recipient: Queer City Cinema Inc, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
  Funding received: $13,000.00
  Purpose: Project: Queer City Cinema 7, Programming
  Date: 2008-2009
• Recipient: Inside Out Lesbian and Gay Film Festival Inc.Funding received – $26,000.00
  Date: 2008-2009 Last modified, 2008-02-19
• Recipient: Darren McAllister, Ontario Canada,
  Minister: Hon. Peter MacKayFunding received – $550.00
  Purpose: To allow Darren McAllister to present his short film “Confessions of a Drag Queen” at the Outfest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Los Angeles, California from July 6 to 17, 2006.
  Date: 2006- 2007
• Recipient : Michael Mew, British Columbia, Canada,
  Minister: Hon. Peter MacKayFunding received – $900
  Purpose: To allow Michael Mew to present his short film “Peking Turkey” at the London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in London, United Kingdom from March 28 to April 6, 2007.
  Date:2006-2007

As promised, the following updates my previous post on the Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus, a secretive group of pro-life parliamentarians in Ottawa. Interestingly, the article, after being cross-posted at Religious Right Alert, was picked up by the blog of Equipping Christians for the Public Square, a religious right political advocacy group currently headed up by a former Pro-Life Caucus secretary, Tim Bloedow.

The most common means of linking MPs to the Pro-Life Caucus is to study their voting records on abortion-related bills in Parliament, such as Ken Epp’s Bill C-484. Lloyd Mackey of CanadianChristianity.com first took this tack in 2004, and in doing so illustrated some of the problems: both Stephen Harper and Paul Martin show up as members.

Others, such as David Akin, suggest that we can identify the members of the Caucus based on their attendance at the March for Life. He made a list of 18 Members of Parliament spotted during the 2006 demo; Conservatives outnumbered Liberals by about four to one, which suggests that at least on this occasion, the Liberals weren’t showing up in representative numbers.

The leading list for the moment, however, seems to be won circulated last fall election time by the Abortion Rights Coalition of Canada. This was the list adapted, for example, by Unrepentant Old Hippie last December in her analysis of Rod Bruinooge’s “kidneys’ rights” op-ed, his first shot across the bows as chairman of the Caucus. I’ve taken that list and combined it with Akin’s suggested criterion – attendance at the Campaign Life Coalition March for Life demos in Ottawa.

The following list identifies MPs according to four categories, then: whether they’ve been at one of the Marches; whether they were designated as pro-life MPs in previous election campaigns; whether they opposed bestowing an Order of Canada upon controversial doctor Henry Morgentaler; and whether they voted for Ken Epp’s fetal homicide bill (Bill C-484) on second reading last year. These final three categories are simply the ones suggested by the existing Abortion Rights Coalition work.

Until such time as the parliamentarians involved perform their democratic obligation to the public and explain for themselves whether they are affiliated with this caucus or not, we can do no more than speculate. Repeated apperances in pro-life causes, however, is indicative that the MP is pro-life – if not actually a part of the pro-life caucus. Those with three check marks to their name get coded yellow; those with all four get coded green.

Finally, those labelled pink are ones for which there exists direct evidence – usually from the MPs themselves, in press releases, Parliamentary speeches, and the like, or from references in the press – that they are current or former members or affiliates of the Pro-Life Caucus. There are only about a dozen and a half of those in the list, including the chairman, Bruinooge.

The consistently pro-life MPs, by these measures, are about sixty to seventy in number, which is around the rough size of the Pro-Life Caucus normally quoted by those in the know. That doesn’t necessarily mean that everyone I’ve highlighted is definitely a member of the Pro-Life Caucus, but it probably means that most are. Of course, individual MPs or their staff could do much to clear up the uncertainty by coming forward with a “yea” or “nay” on the issue of affiliation with the Caucus.

the defence team will concede that he indeed shot the couple, but argue provocation… It is not the eventual outcome of the trial that concerns me here. It is that such a defence is even permitted, based as it is upon patently false notions and premises. What’s next–the defence of necessity in a case of bride-burning? I shall be following this case with interest, and not a little anxiety.

Background on the case is provided by this article in the Ottawa Citizen. The Crown and defence, in the case, would seem to agree that the murders took place as well as that Sadiqi perceived them as honour killings: the question before the court is, does that justify reducing the charges to manslaughter?

(A disturbing “women’s work” metaphor in any case, and particularly during a controversy such as this.)

That a major Canadian development NGO was in serious trouble – for funding pro-choice groups would be news in itself. However, as deBeauxOs of Dammit Janet! pointed out in her scathing commentary on SoCon United’s blog SoCon or Bust, the pro-life crowd’s attacks were seamlessly carrying over from the specific issue of abortion, to all groups advocating women’s rights in general. There was, she remarked, an ironic message – “according to SoCon, fundamentalist Islamist and Catholic men share the same agenda: return women to the control that religious political authority allows men to enjoy.”

The same position was taken by Unrepentant Old Hippie when SoCon or Bust revealed a similar disgust for D&P’s supporting the use of condoms for contraception.

Terrible Depths recently took a similar perspective, too, and filled in some of the blanks on SoCon or Bust, an ostensibly “social conservative” but in fact Roman Catholic project of religious right activist John Pacheco:

SoCon or Bust is actually a group blog co-written by Chris Beneteau, an anonymous priest, and the organization’s director, John Pacheco. I don’t know who the priest is, though I initially suspected (and on reflection I’m almost certainly wrong on this) that he might be Pete Vere, a canon lawyer and author (with Kate Shaidle) of a book attacking Canada’s human rights commissions – and with whom Beneteau and Pacheco have written before. Beneteau doesn’t seem particularly prominent either, though he is an also-ran with the Family Coalition Party, a socon political party founded by Campaign Life Coalition activists in the ’80s.

Pacheco, however, is more recognizable. He also directs the Catholic Legate in Ottawa, a right-wing Catholic apologist group whose mission is to “re-evangelize our paganized North American and western culture” and which explicitly says that it accepts without question all dogmas, doctrines and moral teachings promulgated by the Vatican. In 2003, he also founded the Rosarium of the Blessed Virgin Mary Life Centre to oppose condoms and birth control pills. He and Pete Vere also helped found a new Catholic private school, Maryvale Academy,

SoCon United’s mailing address also raises some questions. They invite you to contact them at P.O. Box 11400, Station H, in Ottawa. Oh, ho! That’s also, as it happens, the mailing box used by the Catholic Legate, Pacheco’s apostolate, and the Rosarium, his anti-birth control league.

• The government of Alberta is refusing to permit employees to list their same-sex spouses as, well, spouses – they must be registered in the more limited category of “benefit partner.” Treasury Board president Lloyd Snelgrove says his government has “no intention of changing the definition of spouse to include people in same-sex marriages.” (h/t Slap Upside the Head)
  

• Pundit Michael Coren has attracted justifiable attacks from the likes of Dammit Janet! and the Galloping Beaver for a recent column suggesting that women should not be permitted to enlist in the army – they’re too small, too weak, and in general should be “laughing with college friends rather than fighting theocratic madmen.” Not finished with that, he goes on to add that women couldn’t possibly fend off the “Taliban tribesmen” and the “thrust of their long knives.”

• Brampton religious groups are tentatively declaring victory in a campaign to overturn proposed new bylaws that might, they say, threaten the tax-exempt status of large churches

In the (Think) Tanks

• The Focus on the Family-funded Institute of Marriage and Family Canada’s weekly family issues report, prepared by in-house researcher and former Conservative Party official Derek Miedema, says that the growing number of senior citizens will overwhelm Canada’s healthcare and social safety nets unless we shift more responsibility for their welfare away from government and onto their families. (Presumably this is more “sustainable” because it would involve more unpaid work by relatives, especially women.

• Equipping Christians for the Public Square will be holding an Ignite Our Culture convention at Trinity Western University in Vancouver on May 8-9. The theme, and subject of the keynote by anti-Muslim “scholar” Sam Solomon, will be: “A Veiled Threat? Islam in the West: Polygamy and Jihad.” ECP will also soon be holding several fundraising dinners in Alberta, featuring Ezra Levant.

• The Manning Centre for Building Democracy has created a “municipal campaign school” for Saskatchewan electoral candidates. Looks like it’s being run by Richard Ciano, the Conservative Party official previously implicated in previous attempts to boost right-wing voices in student politics

We’re looking for a name for this feature of links and we’re stuck.
A name themed around rocks, stones…any ideas?

In August 2008, 42 organizations led by the Canada Family Action Coalition complained to the Canadian Judicial Council, seeking Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin’s expulsion from the committee that recommended the Order of Canada be awarded to groundbreaking doctor Henry Morgentaler.

The “organizations” brought together under CFAC’s banner were, as the Canadian judicial affairs blog The Court noted, an odd bunch. Three were companies (Can American Stone Spreader, Can Am Fabricating and Welding, and A.J. Slinger Service), not public advocacy groups. Another “organization” was New Brunswick professor David Murrell. The Court went on to suggest that the coalition was deliberately inflating its list through repetitious endorsements (for example, listing four Charles McVety-linked groups in addition to the Coalition itself).

Others bloggers were already on the story. Under the prying eyes of Bouquets of Gray and many others, the 42 dwindled rapidly. Active Christians Engaging Society was dismissed as a group of just four rabble-rousers in Sudbury. The three companies identified by the Court were ousted, as was a website masquerading as an organization. Many others were eliminated as double-counts – Real Women BC, for example, was a chapter of Real Women Canada, yet both appeared on the petition. Within days, half the list had been discredited.

In September, Birth Pangs reported that the Canadian Judicial Council had dismissed the Coalition’s complaint. McVety pronounced himself “not surprised” by the verdict.

Reading List:

Benediction Blogs On. “Chief Justice McLachlin and the Canada Family Action Coalition,” August 20, 2008.

Bouquets of Gray, “When The Aints Come Marching In,” August 22, 2008.

Canadian Cynic, “Liars for Jeeziz,” August 21, 2008.

The Court, “The Complaints Against Chief Justice McLachlin are Less than Impressive,” August 19, 2008.

By July 25, 2008 blogger scrutiny began in earnest when unrepentant old hippie noticed chatter about a new poll by a company calling itself KLRVU.
The company, whose figures regarding Canadian approval contradicted reputable polling companies, had been hired by Campaign Life Coalition. The company data regarding Canadian opinion about The Order of Canada being given to Henry Morgentaler was noted at Lifesite and in a press release.
 
Plagiarism was found on the company website. KLRVU had taken a Survey US page, replaced the word America with Canada, and cut and paste the US site page, right down to the spelling mistakes.

Bouquets of Grey grabbed screen shots of both sites, highlighted the errors and pointed out the plagiarism.

Because the Survey US phone list didn’t work for Canada, KLRVU had to come up with something to explain their use of robot-calling for their surveys. Bouquets of Gray, July 25, 2008.

We have already pointed out that KLRVU has plagiarized a page of SurveyUSA and compared the two pages, with images of the opening paragraphs. The rest of the page is much the same–a rip-off of the SurveyUSA page, with minor changes.

But copying-and-pasting material and revising it for a new location is often trickier than one would assume, as can be seen in the section where KLRVu explains how it got your number.

News of the companies incompetence spread online and  Bouquet of Gray found more errors.

Here again, we see a few more changes. Most importantly, SSI is replaced by a Canadian company, Infolist Canada. Like SSI, Infolist Canada is described as the largest and most respected provider of data. But this is surely incorrect, since (as SurveyUSA tells us, SSI is the largest). Indeed, Infolist seems literally to have no public profile: no webpage, no phone number, no nothing.

By July 26, 2008 perhaps noticing all the cyber laughter and unwanted attention, Bruinrooge began to fix his KLR VU pages. It came to light his company had used infoCanada out of Mississauga for it’s phone list, not  Infolist Canada out of Toronto. Bouquets of Gray continued to methodically take KLRVU apart.

There’s a lot to be embarrassed about here. To his credit, however, Mr. Bruinooge has spent today trying to clean up the mess he created. Unfortunately, he hasn’t done a very good job of it. He has rewritten some of the text to remove the plagiarism. But he has not got it all, and what is left is a frightful mess: ungrammatical, incoherent, and unfocused.

The screenshots at Bouquet of Gray are worth taking a look at.

As Allan Bruinrooge tidied his new companies web presence, nothing could negate the reality his push poll had used robot calls and called what they had done, polling. 

And, what do you find there? A detailed description of “Voice Broadcasting”. What’s that, you ask?
Voice Broadcasting is a message delivery service that plays a pre-recorded message on a customer’s answering machine, voicemail service, or even to a “live” person. …
…Further down the page we learn
KLRVU specializes is supporting High Volume Voice Broadcasting customers. With an aggregate voice broadcasting capacity of more than a million minutes per hour KLRVU can provide you with that rare combination of unbounded capacity, low prices and exceptional service.

Most Canadians aren’t going to look at methodology. Lifesite and Campaign for Life Canada didn’t bother correcting their article and press release. 

To add insult to injury in an already badly handled push poll, a Campaign for Life Canada member went on radio apparently unaware the company they’d hired was being thoroughly investigated and discredited online.

As Bruinrooge went through the third clean up his website, he added something the end of July which no reputable company would dream of.
Klr Vu claimed that if people did not participate in it’s robot-calling poll you were skewing their polling. Declining to push a button in a Klr Vu robot-call was, according to Klr Vu, rescinding your chance and surrendering your voice to your next door neighbour.

Bouquets of Gray ends the dissection of the push polling company with a common sense question.

The point is that the result of a poll might be skewed if people don’t participate. But this is precisely the problem with KLRVU’s notorious Morgentaler poll. KLRVU claims to have called 157,115 Canadian households with the question
“Do you believe abortionist Henry Morgentaler deserves the Order of Canada?”
Of these 157,115, only 13,324 answered. But even if we accept KLRVU’s numbers (which seem inflated), 144,000 must feel like the hypothetical premier-hater in KLRVU’s example — they have not had their opinion recorded.
But the question has to be asked. If non-participation removes from citizens their voice and thereby undermines the validity of a poll, shouldn’t the 144,000 non-participants in KLRVU’s Mortengaler poll also discredit its results?

You’d think Klr Vu would have called it a day, but they didn’t. Once more they caught public attention in August 2008 when Allan Bruinrooge jumped into a political polling.  KLR VU set it’s robot-calling sights at a Guelph by-election. (The by-election was pre-empted by a federal election call in September 2008)

Reaction on political blogs was predictable.
Even David Aken picked up Klr Vu’s shoddy marketing and methodology. Allan Bruinrooge told Aken he targeted Guelph because he wanted to raise his company profile. Why would anyone hire a discredited company to poll for a by-election?  Scott Tribe, moderator of  The Progressive Bloggers aggregator wrote Allan Bruinrooge about his Guelph poll methodology and also received a response.  Bruinrooge joined The Blogging Tories in July, but never posted.

One of the questions raised in the investigation of Klr Vu’s Morgantaler poll and the Guelph by-election poll is why Allan Bruinrooge claimed membership in the MIRA.
There is no listing for his company on the corporate membership page of The Marketing Research & Intelligence Association. Klr Vu states on it’s webpage that Allan Bruinrooge is an individual member of the MIRA.

Have you blogged about Klr Vu? Drop us a line and let us know if we can use and link your post in full or in part.

Big Blue Wave
Democratic Space
Blogging Horse

Online reaction was swift. While reputable companies such as Ispos Reid polls indicated a majority of Canadians agreed with the decision, overnight an unknown company calling itself KRLVU Research disagreed, and began to be talked about on social conservative sites.  By July 22, 2008 Lifesite News announced that Campaign Life Coalition had discovered 55.8% of Canadians surveyed by KLRVU polling opposed Dr. Henry Morgentaler receiving the Order of Canada.

It quickly became apparent to bloggers who follow social conservative bloggers concerned with life and gender issues that the poll  had cut come from a fly by night company which cut and pasted a US survey form, and used a fully automated phone-polling system to gather opinion. One of the first bloggers to wonder if this new company was push polling (freeping) was  unrepentant old hippie.

Massive poll a massive scam?

Woohoo, we’re rollin’ in polls!

It’s been two weeks since polls done by Ipsos Reid and Angus Reid showed that 2/3 of Canadians support Dr. Morgentaler’s Order of Canada. I was expecting anti-choicers to respond before now with some negative poll results they were able to glean through a combination of subterfuge and sleaze. So when I saw them crowing about a Massive Poll out today that said “56% of Canadians oppose Morgentaler Order of Canada”, I thought “What took ya?”. Oh well, it’s summer for fetus fetishists too.

This latest poll was commissioned by “Campaign Life Coaltion”. It’s funny that when Canwest, a media chain with no agenda, commissions a poll, it comes out in favour; but when CLC, an anti-abortion group, commissions a poll, it gets the opposite results. Huh!? Indeed! Any poll about Morgentaler commissioned by an anti-abortion group lacks credibility for obvious reasons, and Birth Pangs takes the thing out to the woodshed here.

But never mind that, there are some other things bothering me about this poll. Although Campaign Life (who would never lie) says the question asked was a simple

“Do you believe abortionist Henry Morgentaler deserves the Order of Canada Press 1 for Yes Press 2 for No”

…we don’t know that, do we? And unlike the Ipsos-Reid and Angus Reid polls, there’s no way of checking it out. Why not? You’d think “KLRVU Polling”, the research company out of Winnipeg who did the poll, could clear it up in one quick phone call, and they probably could… if they had a phone.

The phone number for KLRVU Research belonged to a Winnipeg business called Lasercut Designs. Lasercut Designs was run by the brother and sister-in-law of  Winnipeg South Conservative MP Rod Bruinooge. Alan Bruinooge had run for Winnipeg City Council in 2005.

Bloggers began to take notice of the unrepentant old hippie research into KRLVU.

Creekside
BigCityLib
Birth Pangs  notes the tie in with Campaign Life Coalition (Canada) and Operation Rescue (US)

Part 2 Blogs investigate KLRVU Research