Tory Turmoil Up Kanata Way

It didn’t take long for community members to come out swinging at a Carleton-Mississippi Mills all-candidate’s debate on Sept. 19 held by the Kanata Chamber of Commerce and Metroland Media Group at Holy Trinity Catholic High School in Kanata.

In the first question of the evening, Progressive Conservative candidate Jack MacLaren faced Matt Muirhead, a Kanata resident and former executive director of the riding’s provincial Progressive Conservative association.

Calling Tory veteran Norm Sterling’s ousting “wrong”, Muirhead said that he himself has been banned from the party for life and has since become a supporter of Cornell.

Boy, these Ex-Landowners have been nothing but trouble for Mr. Hudak.

Vote For Hudak, And This Little Fellow Gets It

 Seriously.  Or at least  Carleton-Mississippi Mills Tory candidate Jack MacLaren would allow roads to be built into the provincially endangered species' habitat.  Useful, I think, to remind people of the words of Norm Sterling--the Tory MPP who Mr. MacLaren usurped--when he spoled of the rural Libertarian wing of the PCPO that Mr. MacLaren represents:

"They don't believe in conservation authorities, they don't believe in milk marketing boards, they go so far as to say let's abandon our planning laws in the province of Ontario."

Your Daily Hillier: A 2 Hillier Day!

From his Facebook page today:

Seems like Randy hasn't got the ixnay on the mudfolksway message from Hudak Central; as of this morning he was still claiming that the McGuinty No Skills Left Behind tax credit was aimed at foreigners, rather than available to Canadian citizens.

Mind you, fellow Ontario Landowners Associaition alumni Jack MacLaren had an even worse flub up.

Ah well.  Maybe its time to cue it up.

Your Daily Hillier: Tim Gives Randy A Few Extra Strikes

Key Gray on Randy's issues with the CRA:

So OK. Taxes aren’t being paid in the household. There’s a strike. Hillier misread the form. There’s a strike. Hillier neglected to tell the integrity commissioner. Strike three. You’re out. Resign.

But of course the rules aren’t the same for everyone. Conservative leader Tim Hudak won’t throw him out because of his tax woes.

And that’s because he will likely win this eastern Ontario riding. In fact in some quarters of the landowners rights movement, Hillier (or his wife) might be a hero for neglecting to pay the CRA.

Win in the riding, maybe, but cost the PCPO 5 ridings elsewhere in the province.

Meanwhile, does anyone know what the count is against Jack "I am a Canadian and I believe charity should start at home" MacLaren?

The Tories Can Only Hope Hudak Unleashes Hillier And MacLaren

Because only more of those guys can turn these numbers around.

h/t

PS. Ipsos-Reid also has the Libs up a bit.

Jack MacLaren: Making News For The Wrong Reasons

Seniors upset over Tory candidate’s debate snub.  Jack MacLaren joins fellow OLA (Ontario Landowners) alumni Randy Hillier as the Tory candidate most likely to give Tim  Hudak a conniption.

Not With A Bang, But A Whimper...

...the Speechy conflict comes to an end. Tim Hudak ditches his plan to abolish the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, and Randy Hillier--whose idea it was originally--bows to his leader.

PS. Warren thinks Hudak's lying. I don't think it matters. Timmy has to choose one variety of poision or another. It looks like he's chosen to enrage the party's Libertarian wing. It will be interesting to see what Jack MacLaren , Hillier's successor at the Landowners association, says about this latest development.

Dalton McGuinty Can Rest Easy

...and maybe sleep in a little this morning. One thing about newly minted PCPO candidate for Carleton-Mississippi Mills Jack MacLaren; he, like mentor Randy Hillier, has seen the inside of a police station.

Update: A PCPO blogger senses doom.

Even More On Jack MacLaren's Email

...and the integrity complaint against Randy Hillier:

An assistant in Hillier's office forwarded The Guide a copy of a letter sent by the web provider, William Ross Solutions, to Hillier to apologize for the error.

The letter states that an email intended for MacLaren's audience was accidently routed to Hillier's website.

"William Ross Solutions has several commercial and non-commercial accounts, that although securely separate within an encrypted platform, do share some common components," President William Ross wrote.

"It was an inadvertent selection of a single check box that resulted in the delivery of said email to all William Ross Solutions' past and present accounts. As well the applications settings for tracking the emails was incorrectly set and resulted in links being routed through your hosting package."

I'll update this after I think about it a bit.

Jack McLaren's Email

A follow-up to a previous post which you should read for background. In short: the provincial Libs think PCPO MPP Randy Hillier allowed his website to be used inappropriately. Their evidence is an email "blast" Jack MacLaren--a candidate for the PCPO nomination in Carleton - Mississippi Mills and an old Hillier favorite--sent out in an attempt to drum up support so as to wrest the riding from Norm Sterling, the PCPO MPP that currently holds it. Here's a screen-shot of the problematic bit from Jack's email:
When you hold your cursor over one of the links-- "Like", for example, or "Share"-- you can see at the bottom that the link will take you to randyhilliermpp.com. Originally, you would then get redirected to Jack MacLaren's facebook pages, twitter accounts, and etc.

(Note: I thought these all went directly to Hillier's pages, and said as much in the comments of my previous post, but I was wrong about that).

Anyway, that's what is meant in the original complaint about links being "routed through" Randy Hillier's website.

More recently, though, if you click on the appropriate links you get:

The url reads "williamrosssolutions", so its pretty clear that Mr. Hillier's web people were involved in handling the click-throughs from MacLaren's e-mailout. What is at issue, though, is how likely Hillier's explanation for all this is:

Hillier's spokesman later said it was a technical mistake by Hillier's web provider, William Ross Solutions, which accidentally routed the links in MacLaren's email through Hillier's account.

Well, its not very likely, I'm afraid. Note firstly that William Ross Solutions does not appear to be Jack MacLaren's web designer (they are Hilliers). At least, the registrant of JackMaclaren.com (and .net) is one Dino Iannuzzi, who, much like William Ross, does Social Media Marketing. (Note: I emailed William Ross asking if they've ever done work for MacLaren, but had recieved no reponse as of this morning.). Nevertheless, Hillier's response implies that William Ross was doing something--some form of work--for the MacLaren team in regards to this email solicitation. Since MacLaren does not appear to have been a client of WRS, who paid for the work? If it was billed to Hillier's constituency website, then he may be in trouble.

In any case, according to Hillier, this work was not supposed to wind up involving his website at all. That it did was a mistake on the part of William Ross. We are therefore invited to imagine that the people from William Ross were providing urls to MacLaren that contained the phrase "randyhilliermpp.com" in them without realizing that they would, in fact, route the reader of the emails through Randyhilliermpp.com. That's pretty hard to imagine.

And what would be the point of redirecting the email respondents in this way? Dunno, but it might allow information to be collected on click-through rates, and how many readers of the MacLaren emails were doing what. Such tracking is usually something that costs money. So, again, if this was the reason for the re-routing, who paid for the bills? If it was charged to Hillier's constituency website, then the Lib complaint could stick.

Tory Turmoil Reaches Cyberspace?

From CTV:

Jack MacLaren, who is seeking the party nomination in the Ottawa-area riding held by longtime Tory Norm Sterling, sent out a campaign email Feb. 10 that contained links that were routed through Hillier's constituency website, the letter said.

Here's Randy Hillier's explanation for these possibly illegal emails:

Hillier's spokesman later said it was a technical mistake by Hillier's web provider, William Ross Solutions, which accidentally routed the links in MacLaren's email through Hillier's account.

The company later apologized in a Feb. 11 email to Hillier, saying it's taken steps to correct the mistake and "prevent it from ever happening again."

This sounds a little dubious to me. How could William Ross Solutions possibly be responsible for where the links in Jack MacLaren's emails go, especially since MacLaren's official email account is through these guys (NorthWind Wireless)? Presumably, any "routing" of links would be done at the author's end, by the author, no? And, as a corollary, if the links went through Hillier's website, this would be via Randy's say-so, or not. Perhaps some kind of deal was struck between Hillier and MacLaren. Perhaps MacLaren was acting on his own. In either case, its difficult to see how Hiller's website designer should get stuck with the blame.

It may be a coincidence, but this is what the google-cache of the William Ross Solutions "portfolio websites page" looked like on February 9th:

Since then, that page has been replaced by this one. Suddenly...no Randy Hillier!

Update here, though the conclusion doesn't change much.

Tory Turmoil! Provincial Libs Help Stir The Pot!

Now Hillier's activities are also the subject of a complaint to Ontario's integrity commissioner.

Although Premier Dalton McGuinty vowed to stay away from pre-election mudslinging in the legislature, the Liberals filed the complaint alleging Hillier is abusing tax dollars for partisan political activity.

Their complaint says Hillier is using his taxpayer-funded MPP website to help an email fundraising campaign by Sterling's rival.

Thank you, Randy, for being.

A Wee Bit O' Tory Turmoil

In the battle for the PCPO nomination in Carleton-Mississippi Mills between sitting MPP Norm Sterling and Ontario Landowners representative Jack MacLaren, Sterling appears to be winning:

He also mentioned that Sterling has sold many memberships since the nasty brawl first spilled into the public realm through yourottawaregion.com, this newspaper’s website. Sterling’s camp says it has sold some 900 memberships.

In early November, MacLaren’s camp claimed to have sold 700 memberships, though Sterling – who as the incumbent is privy to the numbers – flatly denied it, saying MacLaren sold more like 350.

Ah well. Be more fun otherwise.

Tory Turmoil: The Landowners Strike Back!

Progressive Conservative MPP Norm Sterling should stop dragging the Ontario Landowners Association into his political battles, says the group’s president. “Mr. Sterling should understand that the OLA is a non-partisan group that is dedicating to protecting property rights,” says Deb Madill. “We are not a political party. We care about ideas not party labels.”

Madill made the comments after media reports indicated Sterling, who is in a nomination battle, talked about MPPs running in the next provincial election as “Ontario Landowner” candidates.

And here is the Landowners' former president Jack MacLaren from last year, putting the lie to Ms. Madill's words:

“The (OLA) are very definitely going to get involved in pursuing political positions in the 2011 election.”

Meanwhile, from the No Shit Sherlock! department: Hillier’s antics could aid rival Liberals.

Revolution Rebuffed?

Actually, I got it wrong: last night's meeting of the Carleton-Mississippi Mills PCPO riding association was to choose the riding executive, not their provincial candidate. In any case, Ontario Land Owner's ex-President and rural revolutionary Jack Maclaren got hosed. In fact, he is calling foul! on the whole selection process:

MacLaren said the party’s head office denied membership to many people he and his supporters signed up as party members. He put the number of disputed members at 150.

Metroland Media spoke to multiple people who showed up to vote, only to find out their names weren’t on the list of eligible members. MacLaren said the disqualifications targeted only those people he or his supporters signed up as party members.

“The Progressive Conservative party thinks democracy isn’t important in this riding,” he said. “We didn’t even know the format of the meeting until we got here.

“We had to find out from (PC party headquarters) in Toronto when the meeting would be. They did everything they could to be unco-operative. It’s a goddam farce.”

The candidate gets nominated sometime in March-April of 2011, so there will be all sorts of "Tory Turmoil" to come, I imagine.

The Revolution Begins Today?

The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Carleton Mississippi Mills Provincial Progressive Conservative association (CMMPCA) will be held at Sacred Heart High School, on Wednesday Dec. 1. Registration will start at 6 p.m.

And when it ends we will know if rural revolutionary and former Ontario Landowners Association President Jack MaClaren has unseated sitting Tory MPP Norm Sterling. I've written about the consequences of a MaClaren candidacy before...the provincial Tories slide off the right side of the political spectrum...but if you want to know the cut of a man's jib, I say look at the web-design of the sites they're associated with. Mr. Maclaren was just elected a director of the Canadian Justice Review Board; here's their "articles" page. When I look at the colour scheme, the old "kookometer" hits about a 6.8. So, not as nuts as they could be but, yeah, nuts.

Canadian Tea-Baggers Go For Own Jugular

Former OLA (Ontario Land-Owners Association) President Jack MacLaren has been threatening to go after Norm Sterling, Tory MPP for Carleton-Mississippi Mills, since February. It looks like he is finally making his move, signing up OLAers as PCPO Members in an attempt to take over the local riding association:

MacLaren said he has signed up 700 members to the party, which if true would virtually ensure he wins the nomination for next fall’s provincial election. Sterling is privy to the numbers and said MacLaren has about 350. Sterling won’t say how many he has signed.

And, yeah, MacLaren does indeed specifically compare himself to the U.S. Tea-Party movement.


Bad news for PCPO leader Tim Hudak; he can either snuff out the dissidents and leave himself open to the charge of ignoring the grassroots (a very popular accusation these days), or he can saddle himself with a candidate that wants to pull the PCPO even further right and whose greatest hope for his leader is that he is indeed harboring a secret agenda:

...MacLaren also called PC leader Tim Hudak a “good leader” who is keeping his cards close to his chest. He looks forward to Hudak defending conservative principles as the race grows near.

Also bad news for PCPO MPP Randy Hillier, who MaClaren views as his spiritual leader. Should Hudak move to squash the insurgents, whose side will Hillier be on? Hudak's...the leader of a party that still has some claim to the mainstream? Or MacLaren's, a prominent figure in the rural death cult Hillier founded so many years ago? Its decision time for Ontario`s best known rural separatist.