The Liberal Party Sends Out Interns to Fake-Protest, Too

We'll never look at Canadian protesters the same way ever again. via Flickr.

When several protestors showed up at a Trudeau press conference a few weeks ago, nobody imagined that the protestors were actually just undercover Conservative party interns dressed as regular protestin’ Joes, with baseball caps and sunglasses hiding their eyes. And yet, as the Huffington Post elaborated on this week, several Tory conservatives showed up with terribly unoriginal (and obviously Conservative attack ad) signs reading, “Justin is in over his head” and “Justin <3s the Senate.” The report also named and provided details on each protestor after digging up their LinkedIn and Facebook profiles. Apparently, the Prime Minister’s interns weren’t the only ones involved. Some of the party’s staffers were fake-protesting, too.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen the PM’s office try to slander Justin Trudeau, the Liberal Party’s new golden boy. Stephen’s minions have been hard at work since Trudeau has come to the forefront of the party. Their most ridiculous smear commercial features a clip of Justin undressing juxtaposed with Stephen in hard hat—ostensibly getting shit done—and slams Justin’s past as a camp councilor, drama teacher, and parliamentary truant.

More recently, the PMO was called out on their sloppy decision to tip off news agencies that Justin had charged a charity $10,000 for one of his presumably amazing speaking engagements—while asking for anonymity—to discredit Pierre’s son. A Barrie, Ontario news site refused the request for anonymity and wrote that someone from the PMO sent them the documents, making both the Liberals and the Conservatives look like dummies in the process.

But this is not the first time a Prime Minister’s office has tried sending out information anonymously to media. Jean Chretien did the same thing back in the 90s to mess with Jean Charest and his precious public image. But that doesn’t make it any better. People in the PMO are working on the taxpayer’s dime and we should expect a bit more of them than the sloppy prankster tactics they’ve concocted to ineffectively smear their opponents at every turn.

Sending out interns to pose as protestors is lame. The interns, of course, have been told not to talk to the media. So instead of speaking with one of Stephen loyal interns—none of whom responded to any of VICE Canada’s interview requests—I called up Jackson Byrne, a University graduate who spent two summers interning at two different divisions of the Ontario Liberal Party to see if this sort of thing was just part of interning duties. Turns out that during his first summer of interning he and a few fellow interns went to a provincial Conservative party convention and stood on the driveway, handing out flyers and holding up protest signs. According to Jackson, one of his signs referred to Tim Hudak, the anti-LCBO leader of the Ontario Conservatives, as a “Reckless Rookie.”

Jackson made it clear that this phony protest was not mandatory, and all of the fake protesters/real interns were demonstrating outside of work hours. Shortly after they arrived on the scene, some Conservative staffers came out and one was brandishing a video camera. “They asked us who we were. We said we were Young Liberals, which is true. It was after work hours so I didn’t feel like I was being unethical. But, we weren’t jumping at the chance to tell them we were from the Ontario Liberal party offices.”

So they were truthful, but ambiguous and did this out of choice. Did Harper’s interns have the same choice? It's not clear. Trudeau’s press conference was outside Parliament Hill and during a workday afternoon. A lot of the interns (and staffers) were dressed down in very generic, un-business-like clothing. One lady was wearing aviators and a ball cap, perhaps in an attempt to hide her face.

In Jackson’s political interning experience, he also witnessed Conservative interns doing the ol’ pretend-to-be-a-protester trick at a Liberal convention. “They basically ran around the hotel depositing pamphlets, because the hotel was full of Liberals. [They were] a pain in the ass… The impression I got, and I don’t think the NDP had any part in this (I didn’t have any interactions with them)… In terms of the PCs and the Liberals, they seem to have an agreement that we’re both going to screw around with each other a bit.”

Apparently, phony protesting is all part of a silly political game. These parties’ attempts at trying to screw with each other are very clearly a waste of time. If I were a political intern looking for a future in politics, I’d want to learn about effective political strategy, without having to sharpie-up a crappy protest sign and stand on the sidewalk yelling at my ideological adversaries.

It wouldn’t be overly conspiratorial to think that for Harper, this little stunt isn’t just about trying to make Trudeau look bad for the sake of the next federal elections in 2015. It’s may also be about trying to distract us all from the dodgy actions of the Conservative Senators and how they’re spending taxpayers’ money.

Evidently though, both the Liberals and the Conservatives share these juvenile political tactics. It’s a waste of money on both sides, but it’s most offensive when it’s coming from the country’s highest political office. Ultimately it shows how petty Canadian politics can be, and sheds a bit of light on how poorly our country’s most prominent political leaders delegate their human resources.

Tweet at Ken. He might respond. @kjrwall

For more on the PM and Conservatives:

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The Canadian Senate Is a Waste of Money

The Conservatives Don't Want Your Census Data