Meet the former PMO staffer-turned-Robocalls ‘witness’ with a far-right religious political agenda

As God is my witness, I could have sworn he said he was “Pierre Poutine”….

Just when you thought it was safe to go back and rely on the mainstream news media to keep you informed of potential threats to our embattled Canadian democracy, LOON sticks its beak where the sunshine of truth is rarely seen and uncovers yet another disturbing aspect of the Robocalls voter suppression scandal.

It seems that yet another of the five prospective robocalls “witnesses” put forward to Elections Canada by the Conservative Party’s lawyer turns out to have substantial ties to the far-right religious evangelical Christian movement.  And this time, it’s someone who actually worked for Prime Minister Stephen Harper!

Benjamin Hicks, who, as it has been widely reported in the accounts of the mainstream news outlets, has “flown the coop” to his native New Brunswick to study law.

He is among the five former Tory campaign staffers handpicked by Tory law-talking guy and interview monitor Arthur Hamilton to furnish Elections Canada investigator Al Mathews with a supposedly damning first-hand account of how Michael Sona–the hapless scapegoat for the entire Conservative Party of Canada in the sordid caper –singlehandedly engineered and executed the entire Robocalls conspiracy without any help, direction, coordination, computer-access, money, coffee card, etc. in the way of conspiratorial assistance by any other soul in the known Tory universe.

More.......

http://looncanada.com/2013/11/22/meet-the-former-pmo-staffer-turned-robocalls-witness-with-a-far-right-religious-political-agenda/

According to Hansard, on Monday, July 12, 2010, known in some Christian quarters as “Orangemen’s Day,” it seems that Liberal senator Jane Cordy raised a stink about “comments” and conduct by certain members of Prime Minister Harper’s PMO staff, namely one Kory Teynecke and his, er, for want of a better word, accomplice, Benjamin Hicks.

As Sen. Cordy complained to her fellow senators on that august day in her edgy question to the Government Leader in the Senate, “Mr. Ben Hicks, a political staffer of Mr. Harper’s, on his Facebook page, asks students to report on their teachers so that he and Kory Teneycke can dabble in a little McCarthyism.”

According to Sen. Cordy, the posting on Mr. Hicks Facebook page which gave offence was the text of a notice which she alleges, read as follows:

“If you have a teacher or examples of teachers who are trying to jam lefty philosophy down your throat please send me an email.” Mr. Teneycke told a high school student at a conference in March, “I’d love to make them famous.”

Although Sen. Cordy demanded that Sen. LeBreton indicate “what will be done to teachers who present what Mr. Hicks and Mr. Teneycke call ‘lefty philosophy’? and precisely how “will Mr. Teneycke and Mr. Hicks and the Conservative Party make teachers “famous”?