The Harper government has seen intense backlash in the polls and on the streets from Canadians protesting C-51, its anti-terrorism legislation, from expected political, legal and civil society sources in the security vs. civil liberties debate.

The backlash from the conservative grassroots, on the other hand, has been a little unexpected.

Free Dominion co-founder Connie Fournier recently wrote a column on iPolitics, calling her conservative cohorts to arms over C-51, which she and many others regard as a perversion of the conservative approach to security and, as she put it, “the worst piece of legislation I’ve ever seen”.

Her call to action for a “social media rebellion” has resulted in an uptick of conservative dissent around C-51 on the Facebook and Twitter pages of Stephen Harper, the Conservative party, and Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, resulting in some people being banned or blocked from commenting.

David Christopher, communications manager for OpenMedia, contrasts that with opposition opinion management. “There have been huge amounts of people commenting on the Liberal party, and on Justin Trudeau’s Facebook pages,” said Christopher. “They’ve been getting deluged for months now and yet we haven’t heard anyone report that they’ve been blocked or stopped from commenting.”

According to him, over a dozen complaints have come in to OpenMedia about C-51 commenters being blocked by the CPC’s Facebook page.

“I think it’s an interesting comparison because I think it does show that the Liberals at least value the freedom of speech aspect of this, at least more than the Conservatives do,” said Christopher.

Multiple calls have been made to the Conservative party for comment, without response.

For all the flak social media campaigns get, it’s not a bad approach in this case: polls show that the more people learn about C-51, the more they dislike it, and so far 276,822 people (approximately the population of Gatineau, Que.) have signed with OpenMedia saying that they really don’t like it.

For Fournier, the point isn’t to cow the Conservative party into promising repeal to protect votes: she and others have already decided they won’t be voting for Stephen Harper in October and are encouraging others to reconsider when they go to the polls.

“I already know that I’m not voting Conservative myself,” said Fournier with a laugh, despite the non-partisan stance of Free Dominion. “But I didn’t vote for them in the last election either.”

“The last thing I want is for people to forget about it this summer and go to the polls in the fall and not take this into account. I want as many people as possible to be going up to the polls and thinking about C-51 when they mark that X because it’s the worst piece of legislation I’ve seen in my whole life, and we can’t allow them to get away with that.”

Odds are people won’t be forgetting any time soon.

EKOS polling president Frank Graves has followed the numbers for years and while the NDP can thank their provincial counterparts in Alberta for showing the country that change can happen, he suggests C-51 has “the political salience to be a game-changer” come October.

“Support for C-51 has declined sharply and there is now clear majority opposition — a far cry from the majority support of a couple of months back (the period which coincides with the Liberals and NDP changing places in the polls),” said Graves.

“It’s also worth noting that the percentage of ‘strong’ opposition is twice as high as strong support — which suggests that the growing opposition is engaging emotionally.”

New Democrats aren’t the only party promising repeal and not the only one reaping the benefits of the Liberals and Conservative backing C-51.

David Clement is the director of communications with the Libertarian party and one of the signatories of a joint letter to Parliament and the Senate against C-51. He says the bill, while he opposes it in it’s entirety, has at least been good for showing traditionally Liberal and Conservative voters that they have an alternative.

“We’ve gotten a lot of support for our policies from those who traditionally support the major parties, but what we’re really seeing is people coming to the Libertarian party now from the Liberals and Conservatives mostly, saying that this was their line in the sand and what pushed the envelope a little too far,” he said.

“There are other options for conservatives,” says Fournier, who praised both the Libertarian party and the Green party for their policies.

“The Green Party has taken a very principled stance in this. Elizabeth May has been just one of the voices of reason in the House of Commons when it comes to freedom and democracy, so that’s a real option for people who don’t want to vote Conservative and of course there’s the NDP, who’ve also said they’ll repeal it.

“Basically, what we’re saying is, the Conservatives don’t deserve our vote because of this and the Liberals teamed up with them to push it through so, as far as I am concerned, everything is an option except for the Conservative party. And the Liberals.”

@Claire_Wahlen

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