Conservatives Now Running a Bizarre Website: Rally Facts

There is a new website opened recently, claiming to be committed to exposing the facts about the recent anti-prorogation rallies.

They call themselves Rally Facts Exposing the partisanship of the non-partisan anti-prorogation rallies.

I could have saved them the trouble of setting up the site.

All progressive parties helped to organize this event and we welcomed their participation.

In fact it was crucial to remind Canadians that there are options to the Harper government.

We also had the help of many progressive agencies like Council of Canadians, Fair Vote Canada and Save Our Prison Farms.

But before you mistakenly believe that this site is in fact non-partisan, their mission statement reads like the Conservative Party's talking points.

About this site:

The mainstream media has been reporting for weeks that a spontaneous, non-partisan movement spawned on Facebook in response to Conservative Prime
Minister Stephen Harper’s prorogation of Parliament.

If the media are to be believed, this is what has happened: in exercising the constitutionally-granted powers bestowed upon the PM, which have been used many many times in the past ....

So I thought, OK, if Rally Facts is non-partisan as they claim, I'd put it to the test. So I fired off this email, confident that they would publish it on their non-partisan site:

Perhaps the notion of these rallies being non-partisan is misleading. In fact in Kingston, the riding associations of the NDP, Green and Liberal Parties helped to organize the events, by contacting their members. They did invite the Conservative candidate but he declined.

When I arrived, I was indeed surprised to see the NDP signs, but from most of the crowd got no sense of partisanship. We accepted it as part of a broader group.

I will just mention though, that last year, the rallies in protest of the Coalition were organized by the Conservative party. Jason Kenney spoke at the rally in Calgary, while other Conservative MPs across the country enjoyed photo-ops with their supporters. And yet they claimed that it was the Canadian people who had spoken.

You can't ignore partisanship in any political movement.

But as a member of CAPP, we are actually promoting all progressive parties, including the NDP, Liberals, Bloc and Green, because ultimately we will need them if we want to take our country back.

We are also promoting all progressive agencies. This country has taken a sharp right turn, and we are going to steer it back. If the politicians want to strut their stuff, we allow it. But a person's political affiliation should not exclude them from a progressive political movement. 62% of Canadians who voted, opted for someone other than the Conservatives. Those 62% have joined forces, laid partisanship aside, and we are now moving full speed ahead.

You probably won't print this, since it appears to go against your conclusions, but if you don't, I will assume that this group is actually just another Conservative prop.

Good for you getting involved, but make sure you have all the facts. Thanks.

Their response said it all:

None of that is relevant here. You are trying to make this blog into something it isn't. We think it is newsworthy that many of the organizers were NDP/Lib partisans. Nothing more.

Yet I mentioned that the Green Party was also involved. So thinking that maybe they needed further clarification, I responded:

Perhaps. But sometimes there are things that rise above politics. I belong to the Liberal Party but at the rally I was a Canadian. One woman approached me to ask how she could get involved. My knee jerk reaction might have been to direct her to our riding association president, but instead I pointed her in the direction of all the parties, as well as Council of Canadians and Fair Vote Canada, who were there.

CAPP transcends partisan politics, Our common goal is to remove the party that believes it's OK to shut out our elected representatives. It's not a secret that the political parties got involved. They'd be crazy not to.

But apparently they had no interest in hearing that because it went against their 'secrets revealed' message.

But sometimes there are things that rise above poltics"

haha yes you are right... sometimes there are things, which, again, has NOTHING to do with the blog!

So, once again, thanks for your interest! Bye!

Several other members of CAPP also tried to leave comments, but were shut out since they didn't fall within the Cons talking points. And if you mistakenly believe that they are in fact just a non-partisan group trying to discover the truth, there is an attack style video of Michael Ignatieff posted there.