Angry in the Great White North

WorkingFamilies.ca is at the centre of a controversy:

The Ontario Progressive Conservatives have asked Elections Ontario to investigate a group called the Working Families Coalition because of its close ties to Premier Dalton McGuinty's office.

In a 22-page letter yesterday to chief election officer John Hollins, PC Party president Blair McCreadie formally demanded a probe, suggesting the organization is not an independent pressure group but in effect works for the provincial Liberal party.

Key figures linked to the coalition play or have played senior roles for the Liberals, including re-election campaign director Don Guy, a pollster and former McGuinty chief of staff, and veteran Grit strategist Marcel Wieder.

The people running WorkingFamilies.ca insist that they are advertising independently of any political party:

In an interview with the Star, Wieder rejected the Conservatives' accusations. "I guess the ads we have on TV are getting to them," said the veteran political operative.

Working Families spokesperson Patrick Dillon, business manager of the Provincial Building and Construction Trades Council, insisted the coalition is "an independent third party" organization.

"We don't tell people who to vote for," said Dillon, defending the hiring of top Liberal insiders to prepare ads urging Ontarians to vote against Conservative candidates.

But is it just ads? What about deliberately organizing events and holding contests to get people directly involved, as opposed to merely running TV spots?

The reason I ask is because I found a whole bunch of interesting buttons and images on the WorkingFamilies server (in static/wfc/images, interspersed with images currently used on the site). These images are not currently being displayed on any active pages:

There is a contest currently on the site, asking people to submit stories that discuss an issue that would help a voter decide how to vote:

Want to make a difference in this campaign? Think you have something to say? Worried that your concerns aren’t being heard? Produce a campaign ad the political Leaders won’t soon forget.

Tell us your story and help Ontarians decide how to vote in the upcoming provincial election on October 10th?

Whether it’s an issue that you think needs more attention, a personal story you think voters should hear, or a fact that needs to be heard, we are looking for fun, imaginative and thoughtful campaign ads that will help voters decide the outcome of the upcoming provincial election.

Stay tuned for more details on how you can enter this exciting contest.

Notice that the request is for stories, not for arguments for or against a particular political party.

Apparently they'll be looking for people to upload videos. And they'll be awarded points. People will be tracked as to how many points they've earned over the course of the campaign. What a point gets you is unclear right now. Presumably, though, they will have some sort of value.

There will be connections to blogs. There will be guest columns, and visitors will be able to post comments.

Working Families will facilitate events and meetups, acting as a focus point for activists to organize.

In the business, we call this user-generated content.

I applaud Working Families for embracing the Web 2.0 world. But a word of warning. When you open a site to UGC, you have to very careful about control. If videos are uploaded that explicitly advocate votes for the Liberals, if the means of awarding points is subjective and partisan instead of merely a measure of participation, if Conservatives are frozen out of using the "Meetup" function to organize events, if commentary on the site is uniformly pro-Liberal and dissenting voices are viciously flamed...you get the picture...Elections Ontario might very well decide that Working Families is indeed thinly disguised Liberal advertising site.