Spread of fake campaign pins 'disgusting,' says senior Tory

Two Liberal staffers made fake, Trump-style buttons and planted them at a conference of Canadian conservatives last week. But they were exposed after they discussed the plot at an Ottawa bar and were overheard by a CBC reporter. The Liberal party has acknowledged the broadcaster’s reporting of the controversy, but suggested it was a joke that got carried away. The bombshell story shows a disturbing effort to spread disinformation, Calgary-area MP Michelle Rempel Garner told National Post, adding it should be viewed as a dishonest and disturbing attempt to distract Canadians from the issues at hand in the ongoing election. “It’s disgusting,” Rempel Garner said. “What I’m hearing on the door right now is how serious this election is, how high the stakes are for people, particularly when it comes to issues related to affordability, cost of living, and frankly crime, too. “And here you’ve got the Liberals taking a lot of effort — to graphic design, to actually make things or order them — to infiltrate a conference. “This is what their campaign is focused on.” The story, published Sunday by CBC News, says Liberal election staffers planted buttons at last week’s Canada Strong and Free Network conference in downtown Ottawa. The conference, referred to often as the Manning Conference, is known as a policy and networking hotbed for conservative-leaning Canadians. The plan to plant the buttons appeared to go off without a hitch. Word of them made it into a Shannon Proudfoot Globe and Mail column last week. But the scheme unravelled after Liberal campaign workers were caught bragging about it in an Ottawa bar Friday evening, in earshot of a CBC reporter. One of the buttons said “Stop the Steal” — referencing U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. There are reports of others, including a “Free Alberta” button alongside a pair of handcuffs, a “Lock Justin Up” button printed over prison bars, a “Vote for Carney is a Vote for WEXIT,” and a “Danielle Smith for CPC Leader 2026” button. Another featured Tory campaign director Jenni Byrne’s crossed-off name, alongside Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke. Teneycke has been a vocal critic of Byrne’s management of the federal Conservative campaign. He has suggested Pierre Poilievre is on track to lose the federal election unless he pivots and responds more directly to Canadians’ fear over U.S. President Donald Trump’s economic war against Canada. That’s as the campaign has featured the Liberals regularly accusing Poilievre of “American-style campaigning” in an attempt to tarnish the Conservative leader by comparing him to Trump. Rempel Garner suggested the buttons expose the lengths of that Liberal effort. “The fact that their campaign went on a purposeful attempt to sow that type of disinformation into such an important election is just disgusting,” she said. “This is what the Liberals are willing to do. They’re willing to do purposeful, sophisticated disinformation campaigns to distract from their record (and) divide the country, instead of offering what we’re offering, which is a plan full of hope.” In a statement provided Sunday night, Liberal spokesperson Kevin Lemkay acknowledged the button controversy, although suggesting that it was a joke that got carried away. “After many news reports last week about conservative infighting and prominent Trump allies being hosted at this Canadian conservative conference, it’s been reported that Liberal campaigners had created buttons poking fun at those reports — which regrettably got carried away,” Lemkay said. Asked to identify which speakers were “prominent Trump allies,” Lemkay simply replied with a link to a list of the event’s entire speaker roster. Lemkay also denied that all of the button slogans being reported were from the Liberal camp. “While it is worth noting that many materials being shown online have nothing to do with members of our team, the party has acted quickly to review the matter. As Leader, Mark Carney has also made it clear to the campaign that this does not fit his commitment to serious and positive discourse,” he said. Rempel Garner called the misinformation campaign the Liberal “go-to tactic.” “They are trying to distract from their record, they are trying to distract from their lack of policies, they are trying to distract from all of Mark Carney’s scandals that he hasn’t been able to answer in the last couple of weeks, so this is what they do,” she said. Rempel Garner said she will take the new ammunition to the door. “I will get back on the doors with that message,” she said. National Post Get more deep-dive National Post political coverage and analysis in your inbox with the Political Hack newsletter, where Ottawa bureau chief Stuart Thomson and political analyst Tasha Kheiriddin get at what’s really going on behind the scenes on Parliament Hill every Wednesday and Friday, exclusively for subscribers. Sign up here.