When lobby groups overspin

What if you spin a fib in writing, and actually get caught?

It has been awhile since I shared with you anything about the excellent lobbyists who make it their business to try, almost daily, to use any trick in the book in an effort to close down the 70+ year old Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport. They go by the name “Community Airport Impact Review”, or Community AIR / CAIR for short.

They have supporters throughout the media and politics. At times, journalists take CAIR’s research at face value, despite the fact that — as technical research goes — you’ve got to be careful when you’re getting it from someone who has a specific agenda. Councillor Adam Vaughan (see prior post “Does 7,850 trump 1,600,000?“), MP Olivia Chow, and Toronto Mayor David Miller are all foursquare behind CAIR, which is all I’ll say about that.

Like most people, I understand that not everyone in a community can agree on this or that, and the rights of neighbours to complain are definitely to be preserved in our society. Now, if you neighbour stood beside your house and shouted at you all day with a bullhorn regarding your carbon footprint or the noise made by your homes’ air conditioning unit, it would be legal (as long as they stopped before 11:00 pm), but you might get a bit tired of it after a few years.

In the case of the Billy Bishop Airport, built in 1939, it is hard for anyone on Queen’s Quay West to pretend they didn’t know about it before they bought their condo. One of the reasons Waterfront condos at Bathurst Street cost less than Yonge is due to the airport’s proximity. But, common sense doesn’t always prevail.

To say this particular lobby group lacks perspective at times would be kind. When it was announced the HM The Queen would be flying on Porter Airlines to Waterloo and back, the Toronto Star quoted the head of CAIR as saying “the Queen is thumbing her nose at us”.

But, as spin goes, today’s “overspin” episode is almost as compelling that the notion that our Monarch thumbed her nose at CAIR’s ~80 members by joining the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who are using the reborn airport. According to their daily press release, several members of CAIR are being called by polling firm Pollara in relation to a telephone poll being conducted on behalf of the Toronto Port Authority, owner of the airport, regarding public opinion matters relating to the airport, the TPA’s role in the environment and so forth:

According to CommunityAIR supporters who have received the “call”, Pollara, Canada’s self-described leading public opinion and market research firm, is at it again.

Several weeks ago, Pollara started making calls in order to manage more favourable public opinion about the Toronto Port Authority (TPA).

Pollara says this about themselves, “We don’t just measure public opinion, we manage it. We develop short term and long term data-driven public affairs strategies that impact on public opinion, reshaping or reinforcing it, with a view to influencing public behaviour.” Go to www.pollara.ca/ and click on Sectors.

Is Pollara readying us for yet another glowing, growing public show of support for the TPA in time for the TPA’s annual meeting?

Starting in 2007, the TPA paid Pollara to manage a public opinion survey that painted the TPA in a favourable light. Pollara survey results showing the TPA’s growing popularity have become a regular fixture on the annual meeting agenda since then.

Why should this year be any different?

It is true that the TPA has used Pollara in the past (they are a great firm). But the idea that Canada’s largest public opinion houses serve as proactive reputational management call centres, changing opinions over the phone, reflects a misunderstanding of the high ethics required to be a successful pollster.

Lobby groups fight for mindshare with journalists, so some may feel they need to overstate things to get attention; for that one shouldn’t be surprised.

The key knee-slapper in CAIR’s press release is that “CommunityAIR supporters who have received the “call”, Pollara, Canada’s self-described leading public opinion and market research firm, is at it again.”

Well, the TPA didn’t hire Pollara for this year’s annual survey. Pollara is not in the field asking TPA questions. We hired Ipsos-Reid, an completely different firm. Nothing to do with Pollara’s quality, just a change. At the Sept. 2009 TPA AGM, CAIR claimed that last year’s positive poll results were worthless because Pollara pushed people on the phone; none of which was true. One of the benefits of rotating polling firms is that we (inc. the polling firms in question) can avoid such slurs when this year’s poll results come out.

Did these multiple CAIR witnesses mishear “Pollara” when the pollster said “Ipsos-Reid”? Hard to do I’d think. Whenever we get calls at home from a polling shop, they are always quite clear about which firm is running the survey, in the hopes that this will entice you to stay on the line. For CAIR supporters who claim to have received a call specifically from “Pollara”, maybe this is just another example of CAIR making stuff up as part of the daily campaign to undermine the Billy Bishop Airport.

Pollara, Ipsos-Reid, it’s all so confusing. Your Honour, I can’t say for sure who called me. If this was a cross examination, the probing lawyer would be sitting down now and allowing the jury to consider the credibility of the witness.

MRM
(disclosure – this blog, as always, reflects a personal opinion and in no way represents the views of the TPA, its Board/Staff or the federal government)