Did you leak the latest confidential Harper government pre-election document?" No it wasn't me did you?"
Dissension among the Harperites?
Good Day Readers:
This latest leak of Tory 2015 election strategy documents to the Toronto Star has to be unprecedented. If it keeps up voters will know it all well in advance of the vote. The Conservatives need a Watergate-style plumber consistent with its anti-drug policies ..... fast!
Problem is, Stephen Harper is such a cold fish with a hidden agenda - to re-make Canada in his image not yours - even wife Laureen won't be able to help.
By way of comparison, the Liberals will have their major policy convention (Montreal) in a little over a week and ne're a leak - at least not yet.
Sincerely,
Clare L. Pieuk
A secret Conservative party presentation lays out their re-election strategy, which includes putting Harper's wife Laureen front and centre.
Tonda MacCharles
Ottawa Bureau Reporter
Monday, February 10, 2014
OTTAWA — The federal Conservatives have plotted a road map to a 2015 election campaign that counts on a massive donor- and voter-targeting effort, a communications onslaught, and a bid to “leverage” the popularity of Laureen Harper, the prime minister’s wife, according to documents obtained by the Star.
The 70-page slide show presentation to the Conservative party’s national council last weekend by Executive Director Dimitri Soudas appears to acknowledge that Prime Minister Stephen Harper has work to do to reach out to Canadians and win their trust for another government.
Under “Tactical Plans/Strategies,” it says the party will “Connect with PM with people,” “Leverage Mrs. Harper” and launch a “With Mrs. Harper” video series among others to put a more human face on the government and grab eyeballs in the digital age.
The document was sent anonymously to the Star after the weekend meeting.
MORE ON THESTAR.COM
The path to election victory is charted in a plan to “Create a Strong Conservative Digital nation.” Besides laying out markers for what the party has to do, it says the target is success on an Oct. 19, 2015 election day. There’s no suggestion the Conservatives might trigger a campaign any earlier.
Quite the opposite.
The PowerPoint presentation is a quarter-by-quarter blueprint of timelines and actions to be taken through 2014.
It defines what success looks like: “Ensure we don’t wake up on October 20, 2015 with Justin Trudeau as Prime Minister.”
It makes no mention whatsoever of NDP leader Tom Mulcair.
In the presentation, Soudas says his priority is to “win another strong, stable, national, majority Conservative government in 2015.”
The document says the Conservatives have set out to build a state-of-the-art data-scraping and data-mining machine to put to use on election day.
Their plan includes a newly redesigned website conservative.ca; and so-called “landing pages” that draw people in according to issues that are dear to their hearts, then engages them as potential donors, volunteers and voters.
It did not name the websites. One example, however, is the Conservatives’ move to solicit supporters via its move to restrict special medicinal access to heroin for addicts.
Further, the document showed how the party can mine information on “non-CPC branded” websites, using a friendly media “Illustration.”
The slide show points to radio station CFRA’s Lowell Green, whom it identifies as an “Ottawa based conservative leaning talk show host.” It says a “recent Facebook posting—non-issue” received 55 Facebook “likes.” The document says the party was able to “positively identify 38 constituents (70 per cent ID rate).” Of those 38, it said five “are current members/donors.” The result, it said: “33 Canadians who would be a ‘warm contact’ for engagement.” In other words, the document shows how the party can extend its reach through savvier filtering of other websites by trolling through the social media engagement with such organizations.
The presentation identifies how the party might better use social media next election day.
For example, it shows the party can use a simple Facebook application to “position an object in front of a precise group of people (defined by us)” and ask the question: “Have you voted yet?”
A diagram then illustrates if a responder answers no, party operatives could then try direct telephone outreach.
The tactic would create a rolling update to the party’s get-out-the-vote database and phone banks. If a voter clicks yes, “I voted,” the party would then place a badge in their friends’ news feeds saying “I Have Voted, Have you?”
The party says it intends to “break news over digital channels,” and better use “Twitter Card buys, Youtube Promoted Videos, Facebook Ads, Twitter hashtag campaigns” and online Google Ads to push out its message.
Soudas, who left the Canadian Olympic Committee to become executive director of the party in the late fall at the prime minister’s request, includes in the presentation an enthusiastic claim that his return marks “a new beginning” for the party, and that it was “Good to be back home.”
The presentation opens with several slides mocking Trudeau as a lightweight before laying out his three priorities of raising more money, increasing the Conservative vote, and motivating more volunteers.
It says the party must tighten its processes across all its political teams: political operations, information technology, fundraising, and communication. It will train ministers, caucus members, and riding association members in advance of the next campaign, and try to engage more volunteers.
The document says the party raked in the most money ever in a nonelection year, with more than $18 million raised. (It raised more during 2008 and 2011, the most recent election years). However it shows a decline in the number of donors since a peak in 2007, the year after Harper won power.
And at the end of 2013, its membership rolls appear to have declined since 2007 as well, to just over 100,000, according to one chart. The party’s goal this year is to increase the number of members to 200,000, the document says.
The party is mounting a new donation page for mobile devices, hoping to increase the amount raised last year online — $1.2 million. It is putting more focus on individual donors, and dedicated more staff in 2013 to that effort.
The slide show hails a “successful recognition event in Vancouver in January” for its most generous donors in the “Leaders Circle/Confederation Club.” It does not say the Prime Minister personally attended, but Harper did travel to Vancouver in early January for a handful of public events. They included a meeting with the Vancouver Board of Trade, briefly interrupted by climate change protesters. He appeared with his wife Laureen to announce money for the TransCanada hiking trail, and met privately with ethnic media. But Conservative party events that the prime minister attends are rarely advertised or open to the public, even to media travelling with Harper.
The presentation cites other fundraising activities for 2014, including a direct mail campaign using Harper (“Letter from the Prime Minister very successful in January”). It says a survey signed by Jim Flaherty “is just landing” in donors’ inboxes — a move that will capitalize on the finance minister’s visibility just as he is about to deliver the government’s budget and set the party’s course toward the 2015 election.
It says a “telefundraising program is ongoing” and a “Tele-town hall is planned for February.”
The document says the party is undertaking a broad financial review. “To ensure that CFC (Conservative Fund of Canada) continues to operate on a break-even basis and that the maximum funds are available for the election, a review will be conducted for: all current contracts and leases; financial processes including purchasing; expense guidelines; employee policies.”
The presentation makes clear the party has not yet given up on an effort to replace its famed computer-based “constituency information management system” or (CIMS) with a new system known as CVote. Now, it appears the party will try to upgrade the old system, and redeploy it while overlapping it and syncing it with the new one, CVote.
The document suggests the party is looking to outsource the majority of its technical services to provide “greater resource security/cost variability.”
High on its to-do list is a “renewed focus” on communications. It says “rapid response remains a large part of party comms.” It plans to push its strategists out front and centre, taking “advantage of every opportunity to be proactive in the news.”
The document also says it will develop the Conservative “war room” starting in the spring of this year. A “war room” is the group of people who go on the offence against political rivals’ gaffes, attacks or policies during a campaign.
The goal of communications efforts, it says, should be to “drive our narrative” i.e. “strong, stable leadership of Prime Minister Stephen Harper or poor judgment of Justin Trudeau.” The tools to drive that narrative will be members’ events like “rally’s (sic) with the PM, and Cabinet,” a greater online presence and a “stronger focus on grassroots.
The party is clearly gearing up to organize along the newly redrawn federal ridings (there will be an extra 30 federal ridings in the next campaign). It is conducting “re-founding” meetings of its electoral district associations, and completed 122 in two months. Already, some 247 Conservative riding associations have registered with Elections Canada, it says. It outlines how it is reorganizing its financial arrangements with the new ridings.
The campaigning will begin sooner than 2015 in two Alberta ridings recently vacated by Conservative MPs Ted Menzies and Brian Jean.
Four people are vying for the Conservative nomination for Menzies’ old seat. A byelection must be called there by May 17.
But in Jean’s old riding of Fort McMurray-Athabasca, perhaps there is a hint of trouble. The party signals it is still trying to recruit candidates. “We will open the nomination once we have at the minimum one strong candidate committed to running.
posted by Clare L. Pieuk at 9:57 PM
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