TORONTO—The braintrust behind the conservative group that helped to unseat the Ontario Liberals in 2018 has unveiled their federal counterpart aimed at taking out Canada’s Liberal government.

“We want to defeat Liberals all over the country,” Canada Proud founder Jeff Ballingall told iPolitics in an interview.

Ballingall, who is also the founder of the highly effective group Ontario Proud, said that while there’s overlap in people behind the scenes, the two are separate entities. But the pages do share each other’s content.

[READ MORE: With Wynne out, Ontario Proud sets its sights on Trudeau]

Canada Proud, incorporated at the end of March, has a five person board including Ballingall, along with Matthew Burns, Nicolas Christopher Spoke, Catharine Sloan, and Ryan O’Connor. Three of the five (Spoke, Ballingall and O’Connor) also serve on Ontario Proud’s board.

The provincial version of the organization dominated the online world in last year’s Ontario election — to the benefit of Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives and detriment of the Liberals and NDP.

The group creates shareable memes and videos for Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to drive their conservative agenda. Federally, its content focuses on criticizing Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the carbon tax and highlighting Liberal missteps and scandals.

The graphics, memes and videos often portray unflattering pictures of the politicians Canada Proud and Ontario Proud are targeting.

“It has a degree of humour and edge to it, so it might offend 70 per cent of the people who see it, but 30 per cent will see it and really like it,” said Lindsay Finneran-Gingras, the vice-president of social and digital for H+K Strategies.

While she said Ballingall has owned traditional media companies and political parties on social platforms, she cautions that Ontario Proud’s success doesn’t guarantee success federally.

“It’s harder in that, the anti-Justin Trudeau rhetoric does have a base, but as you go national, I think that base is a smaller proportion of the overall population,” Finneran-Gingras said.

Still, she said it shouldn’t be dismissed because of the type of content the group uses or because it’s a meme instead of an attack ad with a $2 million media buy.

“If that Facebook shareable gets shared and has some digital paid dollars behind it that can be just as damaging in 2019 as an attack ad 10 years ago.”

The Proud empire also has rivals on the other end of the political spectrum but those groups have amassed a smaller following. For example as of the end of day on Wednesday, Ontario Proud had 429,585 Facebook likes and in only a few weeks Canada Proud has collected 67,150 likes. Compare that to the 136,115 Facebook likes Press Progress has attracted since 2013 and the 88,295 likes North 99 has gained since 2017.

[READ MORE: Ontario Proud’s arrival on federal scene renews fears about third party collusion]

A Liberal strategist, who was heavily involved in the provincial election, says Canada Proud should be taken “very seriously” on the federal stage.

“It served as a very effective base motivator for the PCs,” Omar Yar Khan, also with H+K Strategies, said in an interview.

“Conservatives, and Canada Proud in particular, are very, very skillful at getting Conservative voters riled up and to the polls,” he said.

According to Ballingall, during the provincial election last year, Ontario Proud had more than 63 million Facebook impressions, more than 2 million Twitter impressions, and sent over one million text messages and made 2.5 million calls.

Ontario Proud, which started as a grassroots campaign in 2016, raised $459,000 in corporate donations between May and September of last year. On top of the group’s social media work, they also ran phone banks, petitions, and flyer and sign campaigns.

Ballingall said Canada Proud recently started ramping up its federal campaign. For example, a video the group made about Omar Khadr has been viewed 1.2 million times since the weekend. And, he said, a petition for Trudeau to resign has amassed more than 80,000 signatures.

The petition is a “great way to collect information and reach people,” Ballingall said, explaining how the group works. “We have all of their email addresses and postal codes so we can see where our message is resonating.”

According to Elections Canada, under the new voting rules, Canada Proud’s pre-writ spending will be capped at $1,023,400 from June to September and $511,700 once the campaign begins.

Federal rules don’t prevent unions and corporations from donating to third parties, but they are prohibited from using foreign funds for election advertising.

Speaking to iPolitics from Alberta, Ballingall said he was travelling to meet with prospective donors.

“There’s a huge appetite,” he said. “We’re raising tons of money from small donors online, big donors are coming on board again, so I think it’s going to be an interesting election and I think there’s a lot of people with a strong appetite for change.”

To meet the challenge that Canada Proud presents, Khan said progressives need to hone their communication skills so they can compete more effectively.

“They target their messages to the emotional side of the brain,” he said about Canada Proud. “One of the things that Liberals, federally and provincially, have to be cognizant of is we tend to default towards rational arguments and, in elections particularly, rational arguments are important but you also have to make that emotional argument.”

EDITOR’S NOTE: A previous version of this story used information, provided by Elections Canada, that was incorrect. The first version of this story reported third-party spending caps that weren’t adjusted to inflation for this year.

Follow @MariekeWalsh