Spread of fake campaign pins ‘disgusting,’ says senior Tory

Two Liberal staffers made fake Trump-style buttons and planted them at a conference of Canadian conservatives last week.

But they were exposed after they discussed the plot at an Ottawa bar and were overheard by a CBC reporter.

The bombshell story shows a disturbing effort to spread disinformation, Calgary-area MP Michelle Rempel Garner told National Post, adding it should be viewed as a dishonest and disturbing attempt to distract Canadians from the issues at hand in the ongoing election.

“It’s disgusting,” Rempel Garner said.

“What I’m hearing on the door right now is how serious this election is, how high the stakes are for people, particularly when it comes to issues related to affordability, cost of living, and frankly crime, too.

“And here you’ve got the Liberals taking a lot of effort — to graphic design, to actually make things or order them — to infiltrate a conference.

“This is what their campaign is focused on.”

The story published Sunday by CBC News says Liberal election staffers planted buttons at last week’s Canada Strong and Free Network conference in downtown Ottawa.

The conference, referred to often as the Manning Conference, is known as a policy and networking hotbed for conservative-leaning Canadians.

The plan to plant the buttons appeared to go off without a hitch.

Word of them made it into a Shannon Proudfoot Globe and Mail column last week.

But the scheme unravelled after Liberal campaign workers were caught bragging about it in an Ottawa bar Friday evening, in earshot of a CBC reporter.

According to the story on the broadcaster’s website, one of the buttons said “Stop the Steal” — referencing U.S. President Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election — while another featured Tory campaign director Jenni Byrne’s crossed-off name, alongside Conservative strategist Kory Teneycke.

There are reports of others, including a “Free Alberta” button alongside a pair of handcuffs, a “Lock Justin Up” button printed over prison bars, a “Vote for Carney is a Vote for WEXIT,” and a “Danielle Smith for CPC Leader 2026” button.

Teneycke has been a vocal critic of Byrne’s management of the federal Conservative campaign. He has suggested Pierre Poilievre is on track to lose the federal election unless he pivots and responds more directly to Canadians’ fear over U.S. President Donald Trump’s economic war against Canada.

That’s as the campaign has featured the Liberals regularly accusing Poilievre of “American-style campaigning” in an attempt to tarnish the Conservative leader by comparing him to Trump.

Rempel Garner suggested the buttons expose the lengths of that Liberal effort.

“The fact that their campaign went on a purposeful attempt to sow that type of disinformation into such an important election is just disgusting,” she said.

“This is what the Liberals are willing to do. They’re willing to do purposeful, sophisticated disinformation campaigns to distract from their record (and) divide the country, instead of offering what we’re offering, which is a plan full of hope.”