Ford fundraising f**kup

Did you ever wish your government would protect you from scam phone calls, emails or letters? It isn’t likely to happen in Ontario. Here the government, or more specifically the fundraising arm of the majority ruling party, is the author of such a scam.

The Ontario PC Fund, on behalf of the Progressive Conservative Party, sent out hundreds of fundraising requests in the form of an invoice demanding payment of up to $300. The fake invoices were targeted at previous Tory donors, many of them seniors.

Obviously this sort of mail scam has happened before because Canada Post has regulations strictly prohibiting it: “Where a letter or other mailable matter that is not a bill, invoice or statement of account due, is in such a form that it has the general appearance of a bill, invoice or statement of account due, it shall have endorsed on its face the following notice: ‘This is a solicitation for the order of (goods, services or goods and services, as the case may be) and not a bill, invoice or statement of account due. You are under no obligation to make any payment on account of this offer unless you accept this offer.’”

In other words, the fake invoices were not just creepy and unethical, they were illegal.

Ontario’s increasingly unpopular Tory premier, Doug Ford, is supposed to be “vacationing” (i.e. hunkering in his bunker until after the federal election). But there are howls for him to come out of hiding and face the music for his partisan fundraising fraud.

Unlike Wiarton Willie, DoFo is unwilling to come out of his hole, although he has sent word through intermediaries that he is “ticked” by the whole thing. He is leaving it his henchmen to take the hits.

Global TV’s consumer affairs reporter Sean O’Shea camped outside a locked down Tory party HQ for hours before Tony Miele, Chair of the OPC Fund, showed up for this brief exchange:

   O’Shea: How is it possible that the PC Party of Ontario would send out fake invoices giving people the impression they were obligated to pay when patently they were not?

   Miele: First off I want to apologize to our donors. It is unfortunate this went out. There is a misunderstanding, obviously…

   O’Shea: Hold on a second, where is the misunderstanding?

   Miele: In terms of how people read into this mail so…

   O’Shea: You said invoice, you said payable, you made it clear in the marketing that this was money that had to be paid.

   Miele: I’m going to apologize. There was a mistake made and I’m going to review this with my staff and the 3^rd party service provider who drafted it. So…

   O’Shea: This is the Responsive Marketing Group that drafted it…

   Miele: Correct.

   O’Shea: And who in the party approved it?

   Miele: These are all party internal matters and I don’t discuss it. So I’m going to deal with it. It’s not going to happen again. I apologize to all my donors.

   O’Shea: This wasn’t your job with the contractor then?

   (Voice off camera): Thank you, that’s all.

   Miele: These are all internal matters. I’ll talk to you later.

   (Miele and handler walk away ignoring further questions.)

   O’Shea: What kind of apology is “it won’t happen again”? Is that supposed to wash, a simple apology? Do you give money back to people who give money, what about that?

   (Door slams.)

DoFo & Co are going to hide behind their unelected, unaccountable party bagmen. The bagmen are going to hide behind the 3^rd party contractor. And the scammed seniors will never see their money back.

While we’re at it, who is Tony Miele? He is a true blue Tory supporter and prominent investment fund and real estate speculator from the Niagara region. Naturally he is a major booster of DoFo’s proposed Hwy 413, an environmental disaster that will destroy fragile parts of our Greenbelt  As such he stands to profit handsomely from DoFo’s plans.

And who are Responsive Marketing Group? Maybe they are also iMarketing Solutions Group, a separate corporate entity with an identical website and virtually identical personnel (google it). For sure they are a bunch of mercenary fixers and tricksters who specialize in data mining and fundraising for Tory parties and candidates. Readers with long memories will recall that RMG was the “contractor” that engineered the Robocalls scandal of the 2011 election, where they called supporters of opposing parties and tried to send them to the wrong polling sites on election day. They specialize in dirty tricks on behalf of Tories.

It isn’t hard to imagine the meeting with RMG and OPC hacks sitting around the boardroom table, laughing at how this clever plan will squeeze more money out of the rubes. This is how they approach democracy: as a scam. In the past Doug Ford has declared: "The buck stops here." We just didn't know he meant all the bucks.