Conservative Party Links to Right Wing American Groups

Noted on “Zerbisia’s blog”: at the Toronto Star, a link to http://www.harperstiestousa.org/ which opens up to a page showing a graphical tree of relationships.

Over 20 candidates and members of Parliament for the Conservative Party of Canada, including leader Stephen Harper, Justice Critic Vic Toews, Foreign Affairs Critic Stockwell Day and Firearms Critic Garry Breitkreuz, have links to organizations established under the umbrella of the Council for National Policy (CNP), an American group that the New York Times calls a “club of a few hundred of the most powerful conservatives in the country,”¹ and which Rolling Stone reports has “funnelled billions of dollars to right-wing Christian activists.”² This should perhaps come as no surprise given that the Vancouver Sun estimates that “roughly half the current 98 members” of the Conservative caucus “are religious social conservatives,” which is “well over double the national average.”

That’s probably a good estimate based on my own knowledge of the party and the current batch of candidates.

The site also provides a link to a 20 page PDF report

Clearly someone went to a lot of trouble to set this up; the internet registration provides no clues however. Irrespective of this, it would appear that the report is carefully researched and appears to accurately identifies links between individuals and organizations.

This information is fair game in a political contest; now if only the researchers had done the same on Liberal social conservatives I could fully applaud it. Still, the key point is that a sizable percentage, perhaps a solid majority, of electable Conservatives hold what most Canadians will consider rather extreme social conservative views.

That is troubling.