Angry in the Great White North

Update: Attorney General Michael Bryant announces that No Gun No Funeral is his website.

By way of explanation for American readers. Michael Bryant is the attorney general in Dalton McGuinty's provincial Ontario government (a province being equivalent to a US state). Bryant supports a ban on handgun ownership, and would like the federal government led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper to confiscate all legally owned handguns, presumably using data in the federal gun registry to direct police to people's homes for confiscation. The Ontario Liberal Party currently forms the provincial government in Ontario. Equivalent to the Democrats. Federally, the Conservatives form the government. Closest equivalent is the Republicans. In the last federal election, Liberal leader Paul Martin lost to Stephen Harper despite Martin's promise to ban handguns in Canada, a promise that took even the Liberals by surprise. Recently Bryant coined the slogan "No Gun, No Funeral" and started handing out buttons. A couple of days ago, a website appeared sporting the phrase as the site's name, but nowhere on the site were links or mentions of any party or politician. Besides transparency, it matters because under various campaigning laws, a website determined to be a form of policital advertising must be accounted for in various funding reports and audits, and are also subject to certain controls. A site that is not considered political advertising has a great deal more freedom, and does not eat into the allowed advertising budget. In Ontario, Dalton McGuinty's government, including Attorney General Michael Bryant, will face the voters this coming October. The polls show support for the provincial Liberals slipping.

To see how the story has progressed (and it has), check out the follow-ups to the No Gun No Funeral story.

No Gun No Funeral is a new group with a website-slash-petition with a mission to eliminate guns:

We are a group of Canadians dedicated to tougher gun controls in Canada. In particular, we support recent calls for a national hand gun ban.

There are over half a million registered, legal privately owned handguns in Canada today. Thousands of those are stolen and end up on the streets of our communities. The recreational value of target shooting and gun collecting is just plain outweighed by the incredible risk to public safety posed by these weapons. How much more tragedy can we take?

That's why we are adding our voice to call on Stephen Harper, Stockwell Day, and the rest of the federal government to get out of the holster of the gun lobby, and enact a sensible, overdue ban on privately owned handguns.

Grassroots group? The description says they support the recent calls for a hand gun ban. Like someone else made the call for the ban, and these other people thought it was such a good idea that they created a website. But would it surprise you to learn that, in fact, this site is being run by the Ontario Liberal Party, and so is being run by the people who are making the call for the hand gun ban?

They are not supporting the call for the ban. They are soliciting support for the call they made themselves.

It certainly seems like this is the case. Of course, the site makes no such statement. It never makes mention of the Ontario Liberal Party, staying fastidiously apolitical. But under the covers, it has Ontario Liberal Party fingerprints all over it.

From the registration information:

Organization: Glenn Brown
Description:
Admin-Name: Glenn Brown
Admin-Title:
Admin-Postal: 509 St. Clair Ave West
Toronto ON M6B1A1 Canada
Admin-Phone: (416) 489-8683
Admin-Fax:
Admin-Mailbox: nikkiholland@gmail.com

Nikki Holland happens to be the name of the vetting director for the federal Liberal Party (Ontario).

It is also known as the Green Light Committee:

The Green Light Committee is comprised of nine Liberal party members from all regions in Ontario. The committee members are: Harmail Basi, Jean Jacques Blais, Meredith Caplan, Sheila Gervais, Nikki Holland, Jeff Kehoe, Brenda Kurczak, Chris MacLeod and committee chair, Jane Stewart. The mandate of this group is to vet potential candidates and ensure that their nomination forms are in order.

There's more on Holland. Check the updates below.

Another strange coincidence is that phone number: (416) 489-8683. It is the number for the St Paul's Provincial Liberal Association:

St Paul's Prov Liberal Assoc
942 Yonge
Toronto, ON M4W 3S8
(416) 489-8683

Michael Bryant is the Liberal MPP for St. Paul's. He is also the Attorney General of Ontario. Michael Bryant has called for a handgun ban:

The federal government is not committed to cutting off the gun supply, charged Ontario's Attorney General Michael Bryant, who is calling Ottawa to ban handguns outright.

Bryant is mounting a lobby campaign for Ottawa to implement a complete ban on all handguns.

Is No-Guns-No-Funerals part of that lobby campaign? Is it a cloak, to make a political operation by the Ontario Liberal Party appear to be an independent grassroots effort?

Heck, there is even a Glenn Brown in the Ontario Liberal Party. He is the Region Director for Area 2 in Toronto. Guess what riding is in Area 2. That's right, Michael Bryant's riding of St. Paul's. In fact, Brown is the riding president:

Glen Brown
grbrown@rogers.com
(416)455-4653

The address on St Clair West? It is an address that shows up over and over again for various left and far-left activist campaigns run by Homes Not Bombs. Their focus seems to be far afield: Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, and such.

Why they should be connected through No-Guns-No-Funerals to Nikki Holland and Glenn Brown, who coincidently share names with executives with the federal and Ontario wings of the Liberal Party, and through that site be attached to a phone number that goes to the riding assocaition of gun-ban supporting Liberal Attorney General Michael Bryant...well...I guess coincidences do occur.

I guess.

I wonder where the money to create and maintain the website is coming from. Just asking. Of course, if the group or any of its officers were actually registered as a lobby group, that information would be transparent and available. The site doesn't list any officers. Just an email address to "info". What little I could figure out came from the registration information.

Update: The phrase "No Gun No Funeral" is actually Michael Bryant's:

Here in Ontario, we're lucky to have Attorney General Michael Bryant, who is a master of the clever slogan, the brilliant riposte and the bon mot when it comes to fighting gun crime.

This is important because clever phrases are an effective tool when it comes to stopping the deadly gang and gun violence in and around Toronto, as armed thugs shoot and kill each other and innocent bystanders in a war over turf and the drug trade.

That said, they're not quite as effective as clever slogans on buttons, and Bryant has that base covered too.

Just last week, this up and coming Liberal cabinet minister revealed to the Toronto Star -- where trial balloons by Liberals go to die -- that he has made up some buttons featuring the brilliant phrase: "No Gun. No Funeral" and now carries them around in his pocket.

But what is really at issue is that it looks like this organization is a political operation being run by the Liberal Party (and by Michael Bryant in particular), and not an independent and apolitical group that simply borrowed Michael Bryant's pithy phrase. The group is promising to apply pressure on the federal government, but does not seem to be registered in the federal lobbying database. It does not identify its apparent Liberal Party connections, does not explain how it is that Liberal Party executives who work with gun-ban proponent Attorney General Michael Bryant seem to be listed as running the site, nor does it explain whether it is Liberal Party money that is funding this, or funds from the Attorney General's office, or funds raised by other means.

Update: Apparently this doesn't contravene the Election Finances Act. A concerned citizen got in touch with Elections Ontario and got his reply:

Thank you for your e-mail concerning the www. nogunnofuneral.ca web site.

We thank you for bringing the matter to our attention but, after careful review, we have determined that no apparent contravention of the Election Finances Act has occurred.

Sincerely
Frank Dolhai
Manager, Election Finances
Elections Ontario

I still want to know who's paying for this. And there's the still the question of whether this is part of Bryant's promised lobbying campaign. Lobbyists need to be registered.

Update: The administrator of the Facebook group that mirrors the website is none other than Marc Andre Gendron, the VP of Communications for the federal Young Liberals of Canada.

You know, none of this would matter if they just plastered the Liberal Party "L" all over the place.

Update: That address on St Clair? It was also the mailing address for rabble.ca as recently as the end of 2006:

Thank you for your help,
the rabble.ca team

P.S. - Invite your friends to join rabble by forwarding this letter to them or by using our form: http://www.rabble.ca/tellafriend

Want to help but you're not a joiner? No problem! You can donate to rabble on-line at www.rabble.ca/donate or by sending a cheque to: rabble.ca, PO Box 73560, 509 St. Clair Ave. W., Toronto ON M6C 1CO.

rabble.ca is, of course, is a socialist website and a strong site for online support for the NDP.

Now the rabble.ca website provides a mailing address on Spadina, so perhaps they've moved. Or maybe it is still a valid mailing address, since it goes to a post office box. It would interesting, though, if it turned out that the Liberals were lining up with the NDP, or at least with some leading NDP social activists, to run this site. And not just for the political linkage hidden behind this apparently apolitical site, but also for what reaction might happen among the NDP supporters on rabble.ca who usually have no time at all for the Liberal Party.

Same address but different postal code. What's up with that?

Update: Thanks to reader tori, we know more about Nikki Holland:

As a student growing up in Victoria, Attorney General Michael Bryant worked as a purser on a British Columbia ferry.

[Two] of Bryant's key staffers have new hobby jobs.

Nikki Holland, his director of operations and stakeholder relations, will be the chief returning officer for the federal Liberals' leadership race to be determined in Montreal on Dec. 2-3.

So Nikki Holland, who has the administration mailbox for the No-Gun-No-Funeral website, is Michael Bryant's director of operations. Does that make this website an operation of the attorney general's office? It certainly seems to be run from Michael Bryant's riding association.

Update: If you're interested, I'll be discussing this story with Roy Green on AM talk radio stations of the Corus Radio Network, starting just after 3pm Eastern, broadcasting from British Columbia to Quebec.

Update: I did a reverse lookup for the IP address for No Gun No Funeral and discovered it was being served out of a Quebec IP location for Voyages Gendron. Voyages Gendron is a travel agency run by Bernard Gendron. It is likely, though, that he did not set up the server, but rather his IT manager did. His IT manager is Marc-Andre Gendron, the VP of Communications for the federal Young Liberals of Canada

Update: Like several other people, I took time to phone the number provided for the site contact, and the person who answered said "Michael Bryant Election Campaign". Odd. So I asked where would I send a cheque. After a moment, another woman came of the phone. Send it to 700 St. Clair Ave West, at Christie. But that's not the address for the contact, nor is it for the riding office, but the person on the phone identified the location to send the cheque as the riding association. Maybe she was having some fun with me, since it is an address for Queen's Dairy Restaurant. I have my suspicion that the registration information is not factually accurate, and that it has nothing to do with the activites that we know have taken place at 506 St Clair Ave. Providing factually incorrect registration information is grounds to deregister a domain name. Hopefully the people behind No Gun No Funeral sort out the details before all their hard work is wiped away.

Update: So what information can we trust? For me, the key thing is the reverse IP address lookup. It definitely links the domain to Voyages Gendron, where Marc-Andre Gendron, the VP of Communications for the Young Liberals of Canada, is the IT Manager. The IT Manager is certainly capable of setting up the domain nameserver at Voyages Gendron to resolve the domain name. I can't think how to fake that. So that would suggest that all the information that links the site to the Liberals (federal and Ontario) is probably accurate, and that any information that would suggest other parties involved (the NDP, rabble.ca, Homes not Bombs, and so on) is suspect. Maybe it is an attempt to throw off the scent for people doing a low intensity evaluation of this site, or at least dilute the appearance of Liberal Party control. Could it be a joint effort? Anything is possible, but then why is the wrong information provided (the correct postal code for the address is M6C 1A1, ot M6B 1A1, and of course, the phone number that goes to the Michael Bryant election campaign) for a joint effort? [Or it could just be a set of post office boxes used by all these completely unrelated organizations. That would be the simplest explanation, and would make the address irrelevant.]

Update: I guess after all that, Michael Bryant had not choice but to announce that No Gun No Funeral is his website.

See also the Nexus.

If you are interested in listening to the radio spots done on this issue, you can access the CHQR Audio Vault (free subscription required):

• August 17, 1pm segment, starting at 7:10
• August 18, 1pm segment, starting at 46:33

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