By the company they keep. . .

To counter the efforts of the anti-conservative, pro-labour group Working Families, a new astroturf grassroots organization has been formed, according to the Toronto Star.

So, who are they?

Tristan Emmanuel, campaign manager on the 2009 leadership bid of PC MPP Randy Hillier (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington) and now People For A Better Ontario’s development manager, said the group is “small-c conservative” and has nothing to do with Hudak’s campaign.

“Absolutely not — that would be tantamount to blatant hypocrisy. That’s one of the concerns that we have with Working Families. We made a concerted effort to make sure that there is absolutely no linkage between the two of us on any level,” said Emmanuel, a long-time activist of conservative causes.

Hmmm. No connections, eh?

Warren Kinsella has list of Emmanuel's , er, accomplishments, which I don't think he'd mind my republishing here.

Toronto Sun, March 31, 2009 - MPP Randy Hillier officially joined the race for leader of the Ontario PC Party yesterday with a pledge to abolish the Ontario Human Rights Commission and outlaw mandatory union membership…Hillier’s spokesman is Tristan Emmanuel, a political and religious activist who has organized protests against same-sex marriage.

Toronto Star, May 15, 2009 - The federal Conservatives are crying foul against their provincial cousins in Ontario for alleged misuse of the national party’s membership list…The missive was sent to Andrew Boddington, Tristan Emmanuel, Mark Spiro and Paul Sutherland, senior campaign officials with candidates and MPPs Christine Elliott (Whitby-Oshawa), Randy Hillier (Lanark-Frontenac-Lennox and Addington), Tim Hudak (Niagara West-Glanbrook) and Frank Klees (Newmarket-Aurora), respectively.

Wikipedia – Emmanuel was a candidate for the socially conservative Family Coalition Party in the Lincoln electoral division in the 1995 Ontario provincial election. He was quoted as saying, “It’s time to have a principled party that understands there’s a higher power than the government, a power we believe is God.”

Wikipedia - Emmanuel ran against prominent federal politician Sheila Copps in a 1996 by-election as a candidate of the Christian Heritage Party of Canada. He argued that Canada’s Young Offenders Act should be abolished and corporal punishment reintroduced to schools, and was quoted as saying, “If an eleven-year-old murders someone, I think his life should be taken.”

Wikipedia - In April 2003, he organized a “Canadians for Bush” rally in Queenston Heights, Ontario, to support the American invasion of Iraq. The rally was attended by several prominent federal and provincial politicians, including Stockwell Day and provincial cabinet ministers Jim Flaherty and Tim Hudak.

Wikipedia – [The release quoted] excerpts from several of Emmanuel’s writings, asserting that he had described gay men as “sexual deviants” and Islam as “as far from peace, as hell is from heaven” in separate articles written in 2002.

Wikipedia – Emmanuel campaigned against the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in Canada in 2005, organizing several rallies across the country, including one outside Parliament Hill in Ottawa and another at Queen’s Park outside the Legislative Assembly of Ontario.

Wikipedia – In a 2005 interview with the Hamilton Spectator, Emmanuel described homosexuality as “a choice,” said that he regarded it as “the wrong choice, a bad choice,” and further argued that “the state shouldn’t sanction wrong choices.”

In short, he's a faaaar rightwing Christianist nutter.

Tristan Alexander Emmanuel is a Canadian political and religious activist. He is the founder and former president of the Equipping Christians for the Public-square Centre (ECP Centre), and is perhaps most notable for his opposition to same-sex marriage. He is now the president of Freedom Press Canada Inc., a niche publishing company that he founded in 2003.

Let's dig a little, shall we?

First, Freedom Press Canada. Small house obviously, but oh look who's on its list of authors: Gerry Nicholls, he of Ivory Tory fame.

The now defunct Equipping Christians for the Public Square Centre has tossed its torch to:

NoApologies.ca website to be managed by Tim Bloedow and ChristianGovernance

Legal Advocacy and Defence efforts to continue with other organizations, including at Christian Legal Fellowship

Education and awareness directed through the Association for Reformed Political Action

More connections! It was at ARPA's website that DJ! found the information on Tim Hudak's 2009 abortion stance. (He would defund abortion, he said.)

And it was the head of ARPA who wrote about that flap in The Star, basically saying that anyone interested in Hudak's position on abortion is immature, graceless, and engaged in sensationalist 'gotcha' politics.

Altogether a nice gang of dinosaurs who'd drag Ontario back to the 19th century.

And this is the company that Tim Hudak keeps.

DJ! thought Ontario voters should know this.

ADDED: gritchik has more. And WEIRDER. Emmanuel is not just a RWNJ Christianist, but an egomaniac to boot.

ADDED: Check them out yourself. People for a Better Ontario.

ADDED: It seems there's some doubt about whether Tristan Emmanuel is his real name. Hmmm.