Firearms group told to destroy Conservative list

OTTAWA — 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 in a Facebook post on Friday. “We will be issuing a cease-anddesist letter to the organization in question, demanding that they destroy the list.”

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

The party’s move came after several 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 on 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 leadership campaign that broke the rules.

During the campaign, the NFA issued a report card on the leadership candidates, giving third-place finisher Erin O’Toole an A, the highest mark awarded to any of the contenders.

O’Toole’s campaign manager, Fred DeLorey, is the registered lobbyist for the association.

However, DeLorey said any allegations that O’Toole’s camp shared the membership list with the association are “false.”