Conservatives paid Warren Kinsella’s firm to discredit Maxime Bernier’s PPC

The Conservative Party of Canada allegedly contracted Warren Kinsella’s consulting firm Daisy Group to discredit and smear the People’s Party of Canada, according to a report from The Globe and Mail.

Documents and insider sources aware of the plan show that the firm plotted to highlight racism and xenophobia in the PPC for an unnamed client. Furthermore, it is alleged that they also tried to prevent Maxime Bernier from participating in the leaders’ debates.

Insiders claim that the client was the Conservative Party of Canada.

The project employed four people full-time to “seek and destroy” the fledgling party in an operation called “Project Cactus”.

Documents show that the project was run in three phases including a research and branding phase, a launch phase, and a “full steam ahead phase”.

The intention of the final phase was to  “push Maxime Bernier and the PCC off their messages — forcing  them, instead, to defend instances of hate speech and sympathy for  racism.”

PPC leader Maxime Bernier has since filed a complaint with the Commissioner of Elections Canada.

“This secret campaign is an attack on the integrity of our democratic process. I can assure you we will take every means at our disposal to get to the bottom of this story,” said Bernier during a news conference earlier today.

Internal chatroom logs show that the twitter account STAMP Out Hate was used to publish tweets attacking the PPC.

“Daisy will create an arm’s-length organization that cannot be linked to the client or any participating organization. This organization will run a proxy war room public relations campaign that allows real Canadians to shine a light on the prejudice and hate that is associated with the PPC,”  claimed a Daisy Group consultant.

When asked about the accusations, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer refused to comment on whether  the CPC employed Kinsella’s firm.

The account carried on this behavior until June 29, just before third party advertising restrictions kicked in.

“It hardly comes as a surprise that the Conservative Party of Canada would be behind such disgraceful and cowardly tactics. As our Leader Maxime Bernier stated when he left the CPC and repeated on numerous occasions since then, they are ‘morally and intellectually corrupt.’ And today, this story proves it without a doubt,” said PPC executive director Johanne Mennie.

Earlier this year it was announced that Kinsella also worked on the Green Party’s campaign for a brief period of time.

Kinsella has since deleted his social media accounts and has stood by his firm’s actions. In his statement, Kinsella claimed that the source was a former employee who was fired for making anti-semitic comments and stealing from his company.