The Conservative saga continues

The Ryerson Free Press reported in April and May of this year that there was evidence of interference in students’ unions and a coordinated attack against the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) and Ontario Public Interest Research Groups (OPIRGs) by people directly linked to the Ontario Progressive Conservative Campus Association (OPCCA) and the Conservative Party of Canada. After first reporting this in March, the Ryerson Free Press was threatened for misidentifying Richard Ciano as having been at the training session at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo. While we altered the story to correct the error, he is pictured here at the Toronto training session.

Ciano is the founder of the Conservative Campaign University, a political training school for conservative activists. He has held various executive positions with the Conservative Party of Canada, including vice-president. He is also an executive director of the ironically-titled Manning Centre for Building Democracy, an organization with such notable patrons as former Ontario and Alberta premiers Mike Harris and Ralph Klein. In 2000, a Richard Ciano unsuccessfully sued York University for $50,000 to compensate lost class time during a sessional instructors strike in 2000.

These photos show Ciano presenting at the Toronto Conservative training workshop earlier this year, in front of power point slides that target CFS and OPIRGs.

Upon publishing the original story, the Ryerson Free Press was also threatened by several people named in the piece and their lawyers. For the potential impact on campus democracy, we believe that exposing these links is critical. Students must fight against such blatant attempts to manipulate and subvert the democratic process, especially if they can be linked to the current governing party of Canada.