Views Feed

Meet the Facebook group trying to reshape Canadian politics

- Jen Gerson

IT’S AROUND DINNERTIME in a downtown Calgary bar, and Jeff Ballingall is boasting. He’s taken a break from his stomping grounds in Ontario to attend Stampede, Calgary’s great, rowdy cowboy costume party and rodeo. Earlier in the day, he’d seen Alberta’s NDP premier Rachel Notley go by in the Stampede’s parade. He booed. (A member of the premier’s staff said she didn’t hear any boos.) He seems to take pride in riling up a crowd.

Ballingall is the force behind Ontario Proud, a conservative-leaning Facebook group. It is not formally affiliated with the Progressive Conservative Party — or any political organ — but, in only two years, it has developed an audience large enough that the group can credibly claim to be as influential as many mainstream news outlets on social media. (Ballingall himself has not been shy about taking a slice of the credit for helping to defeat Liberal premier Kathleen Wynne during the last Ontario election.) CBC Toronto is liked by about 150,000 people on Facebook; Ontario Proud — run by Ballingall, a video editor, an intern, a few freelancers, and a junior consultant — has been liked by more than 390,000, and its content reliably racks up hundreds more comments, likes, and shares than the news stories posted by established outlets.

Although the group’s real-world influence is difficult to quantify, Ballingall will happily supply engagement statistics that he says suggest Ontario Proud’s easy, memetic content is reaching millions of people. It has ambitions to reach many millions more. Ballingall plans to expand his model and says he is working with teams in Alberta, British Columbia, and Quebec to form similar groups. Already, he has set his sights on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.