Chantal Hébert: Liberals are all talk and no action when it comes to protecting the integrity of Canada´s next election
(The Star Toronto Raptors)

The self-serving practice of preying on the concerns of targeted groups of voters by feeding them dubious information was baked in the DNA of Canada’s political parties long before social media offered them sophisticated avenues to do so.In the early ’80s, I covered a provincial byelection campaign in eastern Ontario that saw the then-ruling Tories drop pamphlets on every doorstep to warn that a vote for one of the opposition parties was a vote for the province to become officially bilingual.The riding was home to a high number of federal civil servants. Many of them were still rattled by the introduction of the Official Languages Act. They feared the creation of more bilingual positions within the federal civil service would impair their careers. The pamphlets were calculated to hit a nerve, and they did.The information also happened to be false. Neither the New Democrats nor the Liberals were promoting a policy to make Ontario officially bilingual. They still don’t.Fast forward to this week and the federal Conservative Facebook ad that warns about a Liberal hidden gun registry agenda. The suggestion is no more subtle a distortion than the stoking — in the William Davis era — of language fears among non-bilingual Ontarians.The Liberals have no more intention of restoring the registry than Stephen Harper had a secret plan to restrict access to abortion.The fact that the above examples involve Conservative parties should not be taken to suggest that they alone use social media to try to frame reality to their advantage.To various degrees all parties are invested heavily in the digital playground. Beyond electoral gain they have a strong incentive to mine for as much personal data as is digitally (and legally) possible. Their financial well-being is increasingly dependent on their social media outreach.On its face the decision to ban corporate and union money and limit federal party financing to individuals was a sound move. It shifte ...