Tory membership list given to firearms group

Numerous members complained on social media that they received a letter seeking a donation

OTTAWA (CP) — The Conservative party is demanding that the National Firearms Association destroy a party membership list that it appears to have illicitly obtained from one of the camps in the recent leadership contest.

“We are aware that our members are being contacted by an outside organization,” the party said Friday in a Facebook post.

“We will be issuing a cease-and-desist letter to the organization in question, demanding that they destroy the list.”

Party spokesman Cory Hann later confirmed that the organization is the National Firearms Association.

The party’s move came after numerous Conservatives complained through social media that they’d received a letter this week from the NFA, seeking a donation.

They suspected that the association had obtained their names and addresses from the party membership list, distributed to each of the 14 candidates during the leadership race, which concluded last weekend with the election of Andrew Scheer.

The party did not name the culprit but said it has “identified the parties responsible for sharing the information, and will be taking disciplinary action against them.”

Hann said all information about the issue has been given to the party’s chief returning officer for a ruling on “what we believe is a violation of the use of the membership list we supplied to leadership campaigns.”

In a response Thursday to one of the complaints posted on Facebook, Conservative party executive director Dustin van Vugt revealed that the party “salted” the list given to each leadership campaign with fictitious information so that it would be able to trace any leaks.

“If we find the source, they will have broken the rules and can still be fined from their compliance deposit,” he wrote.

Each candidate had to pay a compliance deposit of $25,000. The party can withhold repayment of all or part of the deposit from any campaign that broke the rules.

“We regret that this incident has occurred,” the party said. “We have always taken our members’ privacy very seriously, and will continue to do so.”