Corporate Cowards at Pattison Signs Interfere With Election Advertising — Pull Immigration Reform Billboards
Anti-immigration billboards promoting Bernier’s party will be taken down, advertising company says
[What snivelling corporate cowards! Pattison did the same to me when I ran in Calgary Southeast in 2011. We must keep a careful record and, when times change, the corporate collaborators and enemies of free speech, including the Silicon Valley censors, will be made to pay.
Toronto Star’s report suppresses the rather salient fact that Paula Fletcher, the one tossing around smears like “racist” and “hate” is a longtime member of the Communist Party of Canada!
Wikipedia reports: “In Winnipeg, Fletcher worked as an educator in third world development, and became a community activist. In 1980, she ran for the Winnipeg School Board for Ward 2, in the city’s north end. In 1981, she was elected leader of the Communist Party of Canada (Manitoba) and served as leader for five years.[4] She ran in the 1981 and 1986 provincial elections in the Winnipeg riding of Burrows. She garnered 144 and 131 votes respectively, less than 2% of the popular vote. In the early 1980s, she sang with a group called Rank and File.
In 1986, Fletcher left the Communist Party and moved back to Toronto. In the 1990s, Fletcher worked at Toronto City Hall as executive assistant to [far leftist] city councillor Dan Leckie.”
Leckie’s smear, using the weaponized words “hate” and “racism” are the desperate flailings of a lying and discredited order. Nowhere does the poster even mention race — Paul Fromm, Director, CANADA FIRST IMMIGRATION REFORM COMMITTEE]
Controversial billboard advertisements promoting the People’s Party of Canada and its anti-immigration policies will be removed following “overwhelming” criticism, says the ad company that owns the billboards.
“I regret that the decision we made to allow the ad has been construed to suggest that I or anyone at Pattison Outdoor endorses the message of the advertiser,” reads a statement attributed to Randy Otto, president of Pattison Outdoor Advertising, that was posted to the company’s social media accounts Sunday afternoon.
The ads, which started popping up on billboards in cities across Canada late last week, feature a photo of party Leader Maxime Bernier, the slogan “Say NO to mass immigration” and a call to vote for Bernier’s party. They were immediately criticized as promoting anti-immigrant rhetoric. At least one of the billboards is in Toronto, at Lake Shore Blvd. E and Carlaw Ave.
An online petition calling on Pattison to take down the “racist” ads had garnered more than 11,000 signatures as of Sunday afternoon.
The billboards were paid for by a third-party advertiser called True North Strong & Free Advertising Corp., which is run by Toronto mining executive Frank Smeenk, according to Elections Canada filings. Smeenk is the president and CEO of KWG Resources Inc.
Calls to Smeenk’s office on Sunday afternoon were not returned. Neither were emailed interview requests sent to KWG Resources.
The phone number and business address associated with True North Strong & Free Advertising are the same as those of KWG Resources. The address and phone number are included in small print at the bottom of the billboards, as required by Pattison’s policy on “advocacy” ads.
True North Strong & Free Advertising Inc. filed interim financial returns with Elections Canada that show it spent $59,890 on billboards in “select cities in Canada” and received $60,000 from Bassett & Walker International Inc., a company that specializes in the international trade of protein products.
Last week, Smeenk declined to comment to The Canadian Press on the billboard beyond what appeared in the Elections Canada filing. Messages left at Bassett & Walker by The Canadian Press were not returned.
KWG Resources hosted a fundraiser for Bernier’s Conservative party leadership campaign at its Toronto offices in June 2018, before Bernier launched his new party. In a press release announcing the event, Smeenk is quoted as saying: “Maxime Bernier supports our vision that the development of the Ring of Fire (in northern Ontario) can be expedited by the needed transportation infrastructure being built and owned by a transportation authority.”
Toronto city Councillor Paula Fletcher, who represents the Toronto-Danforth ward where the billboard was recently erected, called the ad an example of “dog-whistle politics” and said Pattison should not have allowed it to go up in the first place.
“These are really bordering on hate and racism and I don’t think there’s a place for that in outdoor advertising,” she said in a phone interview.
