Stephen Taylor

In March of 2007, the Conservative Party of Canada held a training conference for its staff and campaign volunteers in Toronto. The conference was packed with seminars and panels designed to effectively educate Conservative Party activists on the best techniques known to win elections.

Six months later, Daniel Leblanc from the Globe and Mail got wind of a specific seminar at the conference that included information to optimize campaigning to reach out to multicultural groups for their votes.

Here is the above-the-fold front page story describing the Conservative strategy:

Click here to download the PDF of the front page
The opening paragraph of the story:

“Select ethnic and religious groups across Canada are being targeted by a previously unknown Conservative team that is bluntly gunning for votes in a bid to supplant the Liberals in multicultural ridings in the next election.”

Bluntly gunning for targeted minorities? Yeah… really.

Now, let’s move on to 2008. The blog Progress for Progressives describes a recent Liberal Party training course that the author had attended where… “targeting by ethnicity” is part of a seminar on voter contact.

Will we see alarmist headlines in the Globe and Mail? Who’s on it?

Leblanc? Laghi? Galloway? Anyone… anyone? Bueller?