The dark art of astroturfing has come to light in Ontario.

Now Ontario’s teachers, freshly targeted by American-style political gamesmanship, are getting an education in the technique.

Not to be confused with artificial turf, astroturfing is all about faking grassroots support by conjuring it up out of thin air. Online and in print.

When mysterious full-page attack ads appeared in Toronto’s major daily newspapers last weekend, placed by a group calling itself “Vaughan Working Families,” it raised the curtain on political manipulation of public opinion.

In truth, we still don’t know all the details of who was behind the untruths, like the claim that teachers work “about eight months of the year” (a misleading allegation that might better be aimed at our peripatetic Progressive Conservative MPPs in Ontario’s legislature). Or the melodramatic warning that “teachers’ unions are risking student success.”

With teachers embroiled in a bitter labour dispute with the provincial government, were Doug Ford’s Tories behind it? Impossible, insisted the premier’s apoplectic spokesperson.

So who exactly was the mystery buyer, paying potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars to convey the impression of grassroots anger against rotating strikes by teachers? No one was saying.

In fact, the public deserves to know (especially since public opinion surveys show sympathy for the teachers and hostility toward the government so far). This isn’t about shutting down free speech, it’s about shining a light on purchased speech that masquerades as public support — all the while concealing who is paying the piper (and the printer).

Not even the newspapers would breathe a word. It took the dogged efforts of my two Toronto Star colleagues, Robert Benzie and Kris Rushowy, following their noses even when the astroturfing trail turned cold.

The Star later issued a statement saying the ads hadn’t been properly vetted. The Sun, the Globe, the Post: not a peep.

Turns out some Tories, who boast of their bedrock support from the grassroots and promise to level the playing field, are not above slinging mud from the sidelines. While hiding behind a curtain of anonymity.

Benzie and Rushowy traced the ads to Vaughan lawyer Quinto Annibale. The ad invoices were sent to Loopstra Nixon LLP, which forwarded calls to Annibale, who is a partner at the law firm (which later distanced itself from the affair, saying he was acting on his own).

It so happens that the PC government appointed Annibale, a PC party member, as vice-chair of the Liquor Control Board of Ontario last April. He has also been photographed smiling with a cheerful Education Minister Stephen Lecce (who denies any ties to the ads) and another PC cabinet minister, Merrillee Fullerton.

“We have no comment,” Annibale told the Star.

According to corporate records, Annibale is a director of “Vaughan Working Families,” which was registered in 2018. Seems the name is a nod at the old “Working Families” coalition of unions that ran negative ad campaigns against the provincial Tories for more than a decade, though labour leaders publicly owned up to their funding role.

I’m no fan of negative advertising — or what political operatives prefer to call “contrast advertising” that throws a rival into sharp relief (or just throws mud at them). But the saving grace of conventional attack ads is that someone owns up to them — “I’m Doug Ford and I authorized this ad” — as opposed to paying up without saying so.

What makes astroturfing so insidious is that it’s anonymous and illusory. It doesn’t just spread untruths, it is founded on the falsehood that it is something (or someone) it isn’t — a grassroots group representing a broad swath of public opinion that is merely made up.

The late Lloyd Bentsen, a savvy Texas senator, coined the term to describe the conflation of grassroots with Astroturf after the insurance industry tried inundating him with a contrived letter-writing campaign. Today, Russian bots are besieging us on Facebook, turning astroturfing against Americans — and now, Canadians.

It’s not just about anonymous ads but unknowable likes. This week, CTV’s Colin D'Mello reported that the office of a senior Ford cabinet minister, Treasury Board President Peter Bethlenfalvy, allegedly used government resources for a partisan “social media advertising campaign” to boost his “likes” on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

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Bad enough that his staff used government letterhead to draft their strategy (a spokesperson noted the misuse of stationery was an error that went no further). What’s most distasteful is desperately cultivating “likes” on social media, much like the celebrities who buy bots in bulk to boost their Twitter followings.

My free advice to Bethlenfalvy, if I were to see him, is that popularity must be earned, not bought. Nor boosted online.

The advent of artificial turf decades ago gave athletes a more consistent, level playing field, free from mud and scrub and animal waste. Time to weed out the B.S. in today’s astroturfing that allows politicians and their supporters to conjure up the grassroots while concealing the mudslinging.