Tory party president questions CBC impartiality in letter to ombudsman

The Conservative Party of Canada's president sent a letter to the CBC on Friday questioning the public broadcaster's impartiality after a pollster who works with the company advised the Liberals to "invoke a culture war" in a recent article.

The letter, provided to Canwest News Service by a Conservative spokesman, responded to comments made by EKOS Research president Frank Graves to the Globe and Mail. Mr. Graves, whose firm provides weekly polling data to the CBC, was reported as saying in a Lawrence Martin column that the Liberal party "should invoke a culture war. Cosmopolitan versus parochialism, secularism versus moralism, Obama versus Palin, tolerance versus racism and homophobia, democracy versus autocracy," to unseat the ruling Conservatives. The column also said that Mr. Graves had "told the Grits that the wedge politics of the Conservatives provide them with an opportunity to stake out a stark alternative. Stop worrying about the West, he's told them." Conservative Party president John Walsh wrote to the CBC's ombudsman saying Graves' comments amount to "giving partisan advice to the Liberal Party of Canada" and asked the CBC if corporation officials knew they were "sharing resources" with the Liberals.

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