Fake, profanity-laden pamphlets circulating under Pat Martin’s letterhead

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This article was published 04/10/2015 (3687 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Fake flyers in NDP MP Pat Martin’s name, one laced with profanities, are headed for an official investigation with a federal elections commissioner, Martin’s campaign manager said Sunday.

The flyers, including one laced with four-letter swear words, appeared in the Winnipeg Centre federal riding under Martin’s official letterhead last Friday.

They were written in an apparent effort to discredit the NDP MP and mock the party’s political platform, Martin campaign manager Lorraine Sigurdson said Sunday.

Neither of them is legitimate.

“Absolutely not,” said Sigurdson. “I don’t know where this came from. Someone’s got a lot of time on their hands.”

It will be up to the Commissioner of Elections Canada, the regulatory watchdog for federal elections, to dig into the source of the flyers, she said.

“I called the Commissioner of Elections and I’ll be lodging a complaint Monday,” Sigurdson said in a phone interview.

“It’s up to the commissioner to investigate, to find out where these things came from, We’re not going to be investigating them. We’re going to focus on all the things we need to do in Winnipeg Centre.”

The Commissioner of Elections Canada oversees elections to ensure political candidates, parties and their supporters uphold their ethical responsibilities under Canada’s Election Act.

The profanity-laced flyer, printed in multi-coloured ink with bold-faced profanities and some of the saltiest phrases in the English language, opens with obvious satire.

“I’ve used salty language because I’m passionate,” Martin is quoted as saying. The statement goes on to put a string of outlandish statements in Martin’s name, including: “If you vote for the effeminate Trudeau, you are delusional. If you vote for Harper you are an asshole I am Winnipeg Centre’s only hope.”

That reference is an apparent attempt to riff off a highly publicized and heated exchange last month between Martin and Green candidate Don Woodstock.

Martin was roundly criticized for muttering under his breath “you son of a bitch,” after Woodstock criticized Martin, accusing him of not living in the core-area riding and ignoring mental health issues that are a concern to constituents.

The candidates forum was held at the Portage Place Shopping Centre and received extensive media coverage in mid-September.

The second fake flyer, printed in an 8×10 inch format, looks less inflammatory with its neatly printed sentences.

But it’s filled with off-the-wall campaign promises, most of which echo anti-Bolshevik propaganda, the kind popular in mid 20th-century election campaigns in parts of Canada and the United States.

It promised, for instance, to nationalize banks, shut down “dirty tar sands” and send workers to “re-education camps,” as well as to cut diplomatic ties with the “Zionist war monger state of Israel.”

It also pledged $1 billion for three years (with more to follow) to foment revolutions with “our socialist freedom fighting brothers and sisters in developing countries.”

Emailed copies of the two different flyers were provided to the Free Press by a city man who photographed them with his smartphone Friday night after spotting them at a Subway fast-food outlet in the 1100 block of Portage Avenue. The man, who asked not to be identified, said he saw a small stack of the flyers sitting by the newspapers near the entrance to the Subway outlet while dining with his wife and two young children Friday evening.

“It caught my eye because it has NDP logos and insignias, so I wanted to glance at them,” he told the Free Press Sunday.

“I began reading… they were filled with foul language. I was a little shocked — like this can’t be real. Pat Martin is not going to put this out. It piqued my curiosity and I was a little astonished about what I was reading.”

The man, who lives in Winnipeg Centre, said he called the NDP campaign office when he got home. “They were surprised and said they would run and go look at them and get rid of them if they weren’t Pat Martin’s.”

He did not tell any Subway staff about the circulars.

The circulars appeared professionally done at first glance and were colour printed on high-quality glossy paper, he said. But they were most likely printed at someone’s home, he added.

Sigurdson said the fake circulars were also found at a coffee shop, but she wasn’t sure which.

The man who found the flyers said he still hasn’t decided who to vote for in Winnipeg Centre on Oct. 19, but may vote for Martin.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca

greg.lockert@freepress.mb.ca