Chapter Seventeen: The Campus Leadership Roles of Morton Blackwell and Preston Manning

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole my Country

In 2006, Cliff Fryers, Chair of the Conservative Party’s 2005 policy conference, and Preston Manning, former leader of the Reform Party, sat down with Morton Blackwell, founder of the American Leadership Institute.  Blackwell, a former Special Assistant to President Reagan, and longtime activist for the Conservative Movement, was eager to assist his Canadian colleagues, who had also been involved with the movement for decades.

Fryers and Manning were interested in starting their own Leadership Institute in Canada, based on the strategies and techniques of Blackwell's successful school of instruction in the art of dirty tricks.  Grover Norquist, Ralph Reed and Karl Rove, are all former graduates, and according to Marci MacDonald, 700 Canadian graduates of Blackwell's school, are working for the movement in Canada. (2)

Manning won't say who provided the $10 million single donation that was the seed money for his Manning Centre for Building Democracy, but when it was established, Cliff Fryer was named its director (3).  Fryer has worked with the Reform-Alliance party from its inception and knows how the game is played.

Until recently, Fryer was the chairman of the Enmax Corporation's board of directors, the Calgary owned utilities company.  However, he was forced to resign for backing former CEO Gary Holden, who was fired  following the discovery that he took a trip to the French Riviera, courtesy of a company that does business with Enmax.  According to other board members, Fryer’s resignation was "for the best".  Said one: “Well there's a few of us that weren't all that enthused about some of the comments that he made back when we were having some issues with Enmax and some of the things that had transpired over the years so we kind of were advocating for his resignation ... " (4)

According to Rick Bell, columnist for the Calgary Sun, Holden's parting shots were typical.

He insists he's done nothing wrong while speaking of "intrigue," the "motives" of "business and political forces," the attacks on Enmax, the biased media reports not telling the true story, his self-styled high-minded decision to depart and his possible future career as a politician.

When all is said, Holden does what he does best and what Enmax board chairman Cliff Fryers also does best.  He doesn't tell us anything of substance when asked but then uses one-way e-mails or a bully pulpit to play victim, casting other supposed sinister sorts as the source of what is the ongoing soap opera over at Enmax. (5)

This is what most neoconservatives do.  Blame someone else.

Another High-Profile Visitor

While Morton Blackwell was discussing the nuts and bolts of his operation to Preston Manning and company, Ralph Reed of the Christian Coalition, was the featured speaker at an election training program hosted by the Charles McVety's Canada Family Action Coalition.  (6)

Reed counsels social conservatives to practice “stealth politics” and “fool voters” by “hiding their religious agenda and instead promoting popular issues such as tax reform.” (7) The merging of neoconservatism with misguided Evangelism, to create what Noam Chomsky calls. "The religion of market knows best".  At least part of it is based on deceit.

In attendance at Reed’s strategy session, were Tim Dobson, Conservative Candidate for Pickering-Scarborough East, John Carmichael, Conservative Candidate for Don Valley West (won in 2011), Michael Mostyn, Conservative Candidate for York Centre, Rhondo Thomas, from McVety's Christian College, and Jim Flaherty, now our finance minister.

Reed told the assembled activists and candidates about the philosophical approach that should motivate their activities: “We're not trying to change a church into a political party, and we're not trying to change a political party into a church, but if the people of the church don't get involved, somebody else will.” (6)

Reminds me of an old Irish proverb that my father told me "If God doesn't change you, the devil will", his loose interpretation of religion.  Clearly, the devil is at work here.

What They Teach at Manning's Campus Leadership Training Program

In March of 2009, a Conservative Party workshop was held at the University of Waterloo. A student who attended was clever enough to take a tape recorder and what was revealed from the meeting was a clandestine attempt to take over student unions, by setting up a series of front groups.

This operation is one of the strategies taught at the Manning Centre's Campus Leadership Training program.  From their website:

Has your student government been overrun by extreme left-wing students?

Is freedom of speech being infringed upon on your campus? Are groups on campus using student money to further a left-wing agenda? Do you want to get organized and fight back?

Then the Manning Centre’s Campus Leadership Training is for you. Campus Leadership Seminars introduce aspiring political leaders on campus to the principles and practices of effective political involvement. Topics for these seminars include:

»The Fundamentals of Campaigning
» Political Communications
» How to run an effective Campus Club
» How to win campaigns on campus
» How to build effective coalitions

What they teach, however, is something a little different.

Audio recordings, photographs and documents that were leaked from a recent Conservative Party student workshop in Waterloo expose a partisan attempt to take over student unions and undermine Ontario Public Interest Research Groups (OPIRGs) on campuses across Ontario. 

At a session held in early February by the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association (OPCCA) and the Manning Centre for Building Democracy, campus Conservatives, party campaigners, and a Member of Parliament discussed strategies to gain funding from student unions for the Conservative Party and ways to run for—and win—positions within student unions. (8)

What Manning had instructed the students to do was to set up "front" groups, all linked to a central organization.  In this way they could get funding for each group, despite the fact that they were not independent.  The Member of Parliament they speak of was Peter Braid, Conservative MP for Kitchener-Waterloo.

Blackwell's Leadership Institute is running the same kind of clandestine operations as Manning, under their Campus Leadership Program.  Journalist Jeff Horowitz went under cover at one of their summer seminars, where they taught their students how to manipulate elections.  One tactic was to volunteer to help run the election, and then place the ballot box in an obscure location, with little foot traffic.  Conservatives would know well in advance where it was. (9)

They also provide funds for a campus newspaper espousing conservative theories, and "front" groups for the Young Republicans.

The structure of Blackwell's Campus Leadership Program is simple. The Leadership Institute trains promising conservative college graduates over the summer and dispatches them to campuses in the fall with a mandate to start conservative student organizations.

Need $500 and some ideas to start a combative right-wing campus publication? The institute would love to help you. Unlike chapter-based political organizations, CLP clubs are unaffiliated with either the Leadership Institute or each other. According to Blackwell,this trait offers a serious advantage: "No purges." The clubs' independence also comes with the benefit of plausible deniability. "You can get away with stuff that you would take a lot of flak for doing in the College Republicans." (9)

Creating mini-me Ralph Reeds and Karl Roves on both sides of the border.

Sources:

1. Bloodshed on the floor was inevitable, By Siri Agrell, National Post, March 21, 2005

2. The Armageddon Factor: The Rise of Christian Nationalism in Canada, By: Marci McDonald, Random House Canada, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-307-35646-8

3. Manning Centre for Building Democracy, http://www.manningcentre.ca/

4. Enmax chairman Cliff Fryers resigns, CBC News, September 8, 2011

5. Watt is this guy thinking? By Rick Bell, Calgary Herald, January 22, 2011

6. US Political Wiz Ralph Reed Urges Canadian Social Conservatives to ‘Make History’ This Election,”, LifeSiteNews.com, December 2, 2005

7. Secrets and Ties, By Bill Berkowitz, Media Transparency, April 17, 2005

8. Conservative Party strategy to take over student unions exposed, By Rebecca Granovsky-Larsen, Editor-in-Chief and Nora Loreto, News Editor, Ryerson Free Press, March 16, 2009

9. My Right-wing Degree, By Jeff Horwitz, May 24, 2005

The Canadian Manifesto: Introduction

The Canadian Manifesto: How the American Neoconservatives Stole My Country

Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott's administrative assistant, Timothy Bloedow, once accused me of hating Christians. I had begun to blog on the activities of Canada's Christian Right, admittedly often in a frenzied fashion, born out of both anger and fear.

Anger over their assumption that the majority of Canadians were morally bereft, and fear of the apparent growth of the "dominionist" or "reconstructionist" movement, that sought to turn Canada into a theocracy.

Theology professor, Dr. John Stackhouse confirms those fears: "There are Christians about whom even other Christians should be wary, especially those who talk about things like theocracy and Christian government."

Bloedow runs a website called christiangovernance.ca, promoting just those things that we should be wary of. And his boss, Maurice Vellacott, is a central figure in Canada's Religious Right. His offices on Parliament Hill have become a sort of meeting place for fellow travellers.

The Christian Manifesto

Every movement promoting revolutionary change, has some kind of manifesto. A declaration of principles and intentions.

The Communist Manifesto, the Fascist Manifesto, the Humanist Manifesto .... The list goes on.

In his book Faith in the Halls of Power, D. Michael Lindsay reveals that the Moral Majority/Religious Right, was inspired by Francis Schaeffer (1912-1984), and that his book A Christian Manifesto, became the declaration for their movement.

Schaeffer was a Christian theologian, philosopher, and Presbyterian pastor, who was vehemently opposed to religious modernism. Schaeffer and his wife ran a commune in Switzerland, called L'Abri, and many famous Christian Right leaders passed through their doors.

It was here where they nursed the idea of a "second American Revolution". This time they would not be taking on the British, but the secular Humanists, reclaiming the United States for Christianity.

The Canadian Manifesto

Most of the tenets and tentacles of the American Religious Right, simply crossed the border into Canada, finding willing partners within a small group of Orthodox Christians, with the same goal of "taking their country back".

American James Dobson provided $1.6 million to bolster the activities of Focus on the Family Canada, and two members of the Board of Directors, Tom Mason and Jim Daly, are also vice-presidents of Focus on the Family in the United States.

A small group of Canadian fundamentalists visited a Washington conference of the Christian Coalition, and brought back what they learned, establishing the Canadian Christian Coalition. One member of that group was Jason Kenney, now a cabinet minister in the Harper government.

Christian Coalition's Ralph Reed, has also spoke in Canada, as part of the training of our religious political activists.

The anti-feminist Eagle Forum nurtures the anti-feminist REAL Women of Canada.

Faytene Kryskow Grasseschi's 4MYCanada, hosts events called TheCry. Hours of emotional prayers, begging God's mercy for the horrible country that Canada has become. They are a version of American Evangelist Lou Engle's TheCall. Engle refers to Faytene as "his daughter" and has often made appearances with her, both live and by video stream.

He has also rallied his followers to go to Canada to increase the numbers at her rallies, giving the appearance of mass 'Canadian' anger.

American Bill McCartney's Promise Keepers, a group promoting male dominance, was brought to Canada by another Conservative MP, David Sweet.

However, the shared support system, does not stop at religious organizations. Think tanks, corporate media, publishing houses, Astroturf groups, have all infested our political system and threaten our democracy.

American Morton Blackwell, who started the Leadership Institute that trains young conservative activists, helped Preston Manning establish the Manning Centre for Building Democracy.

Lewis F. Powell, an associate U.S. Supreme Court Justice, appointed by Richard Nixon, helped Michael Walker establish the Fraser Institute. The Fraser is also heavily financed by the American tobacco industry.

The National Citizens Coalition has strong ties with the American Republicans. McLaughlin* and Associates, a Republican polling firm, handles most of their campaigns, and Richard Nixon's former guru, Arthur Finklestein, worked for the NCC for sixteen years, training Stephen Harper in the art of anti-liberalism.

The Canadian Constitution Foundation, which was started by Conservative MP John Weston, is fashioned after the American Federalist Society, home of Kenneth Starr, head witch hunter, in the attempted impeachment of Bill Clinton.

The CCF also joined forces with Americans for Prosperity, the organization that launched the Tea Party, founded by the infamous Koch brothers; in trying to put a halt to Obama's healthcare plan. They brought "client" Shona Holmes to the U.S. where she appeared in TV ads, suggesting that she would have died under Canada's healthcare system, had she not gone to the U.S. for treatment of a malignant cancer. The whole thing turned out to be a hoax.

We may have won the War of 1812, that helped to establish Canadian sovereignty, but with the help of Canadian Neoconservatives (a marriage between the "new conservatism" and the Religious Right), there is a concerted effort to give it back.

That doesn't mean that they are trying to create a fifty-first state.  Like the old saying "why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free".  To them we are just another third world country, so they need to have an authoritative leader in place who will do as they're told.

We are being remodelled for the financial interests of the American corporate sector.

Our justice system, gun laws, foreign policy, healthcare, education, prison system, culture ... everything Canadian, will all be Americanized.

Part of a broader scheme called "Movement Conservatism".

This book sets out to prove it.

A Canadian Manifesto, detailing the attempted U.S. (conservative) takeover of Canada, and the Canadian players who not only allowed it, but encouraged it.

Footnotes:

*John McLaughlin, a partner in McLaughlin and Associates, personally handled Stephen Harper's 2003 campaign that gave him the leadership of the Reform-Alliance Party (now The Conservative Party of Canada).  Harper still refuses to tell us who financed that campaign, leading to speculation that not all benefactors were Canadian.