Editor:
Last week Coastal residents received yet another mailed survey from MP John Weston: Making your family our priority.
It asked "Who is on the right track to deliver real results for families?"
Readers are to indicate their choice: Greens, Conservatives, NDP or Liberals. Completed surveys are to be mailed, postage free, with the respondent's name, address, telephone number and email address. The survey can be accessed via the Internet or smart phone: sure to appeal to younger voters.
So is this just another John Weston survey? Maybe. The return address is John Weston but it's c/o CRG - Government Caucus Services. CRG stands for Conservative Resource Group: funded by taxpayers, but wholly controlled by the Conservative Party of Canada.
The CRG is the central intelligence agency of the Conservative party. It creates and controls the message that Conservative cabinet ministers and MPs speak. It conducts polling and engages in political messaging. It does Opposition research, that is, digging up dirt on opposition members to discredit those members. They also amass and manage the huge data banks that give their robo-call and live callers lists to know how particular voters may be leaning, not just on election day, but year round! And they have been amassing and refining this information for years.
Those lists are compiled through a complex web of information gathering, including the MP surveys.
If all the Conservatives were interested in was gauging public opinion on particular issues, anonymous surveys would do the trick. But for effective partisan political purposes they need names, addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses so their data banks can generate lists of supporters and non-supporters, right down to political party preference, and then customize their message to the recipients.
Was the latest mailing just another John Weston survey? Maybe.
Jef Keighley
Halfmoon Bay
