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OTTAWA — Erin O’Toole has signalled he will make aggressive digital messaging a feature of his bid for the Conservative leadership with the appointment of Jeff Ballingall, founder of Ontario Proud and other influential Facebook pages, to oversee his digital strategy.

Ballingall has made a name for himself over the past few years in pioneering the use of Facebook to spread conservative messaging, often through viral posts that don’t require any ad spending. The Ontario Proud page remains his best known effort, with nearly half a million followers, but he also runs Canada Proud (192,000 followers) and B.C. Proud (82,000 followers). In addition Ballingall co-owns The Post Millennial, another conservative website that’s gained a strong online following.

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There have been efforts by various other political groups to match Ontario Proud’s reach on Facebook, but nobody has come close. During the 2018 Ontario election Ballingall also drew in big-money donations through Ontario Proud to run television ads and send out mass texts to cell phones. In the aftermath, Liberal campaign manager David Herle told a Ryerson University forum that Ontario Proud “delegitimized Kathleen Wynne. And we didn’t know how to fight it.”