Angry in the Great White North

Blue Maple Leaf has gotten well-deserved attention for his reseach on GPC, the polling firm that first released a poll that showed the Liberals had pulled ahead of the Conservatives in popular support in Canada. He links to Brent Colbert, who in turn provides more links to more blog articles showing how GPC has been a Liberal Party booster for some time.

Here are my two bits. This is the list of the senior folks at GPC:

• James Roche
• John Barr
• Remi Bujold
• Lawrence Cannon
• Cyndy de Giusti
• John Hill
• Otto Lang
• Don Mazankowski
• David Peterson
• Kevin Peterson
• Ron Vrancart

Notice a familiar name? I did. Otto Lang. He was a cabinet minister during the Trudeau years. He was mentor for the current federal finance minister, Ralph Goodale.

And the kicker. In March, Paul Martin named him to be the co-chair for the Manitoba chapter of the National Liberal Campaign Committee.

So the man is working to get the Liberals re-elected in the coming election, and he is a senior man at a polling firm that made huge news when it was the first to report that the Liberals had pulled up to a tie with the Conservatives.

Interesting. Very interesting. One question that is often asked is how much to polls shape public opinion as much as they report on it. In other words, if I could report polls showing my guy pulling ahead, does it become a self-fulfilling prophecy? Can I influence people by telling them what they are thinking, so to speak? If so, how appropriate is it to have a campaign co-chair for a party in an election also be a senior counsel at a polling firm?

Other interesting things came out when I ran the names of the senior officers at GPC through the donations lists. I found that individuals with their names have donated a total of $17,331.45 to all political parties since 1993. Of that, only $4802.26, or 27% went to any party other than the Liberal Party. In other words, in terms of dollar amounts, it would appear that the senior fellows at GPC lean 73% Liberal, despite the presence of conservative figures such as Don Mazankowski, Deputy Leader in Brian Mulroney's government, and Ron Vrancart, cabinet minister in Mike Harris' provincial conservative government in Ontario.

In fact, Mr. Mazankowski by himself is responsible for $3044.51 of the non-Liberal donations, or 63%. He stopped donating in 1998. If you remove him, the percentage of donation amounts to non-Liberal Parties drops to 10%.

Furthermore, since 2003, when Paul Martin came to power, the donation amount was $6182.52 to all political parties. The breakdown of those donations:
Liberal Party 100%
All other parties: 0%

The number one donor since 2003 with 72% of total dollar donations: Otto Lang. Boy his name comes up a lot in this story.