Ontario PCs respond after being called out for sending out fake invoices for donations

TORONTO -

The Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario has issued an apology after coming under fire for sending out campaign donation requests to residents designed to look like invoices.

In a statement, the PC party said it “regrets” that the correspondence was sent out.

“At no time was it our intention to mislead our valued supporters. We regret that this correspondence was sent to a limited group of supporters by one of our vendors and will not happen again," the party said Thursday. "We apologize for any confusion or frustration this may have caused."

Premier Doug Ford has not released a public statement regarding the fundraising documents.

The vendor mentioned by the PCs is a Toronto-based marketing company called The Responsive Marketing Group (TRMG), which shares the same address listed on the fake invoices.

CTV News Toronto has reached out to TRMG for comment but has yet to receive a response.

Political analyst Jim Warren told CTV News Toronto Thursday that political fundraising efforts are often contracted out to third parties.

“A lot of their operations is either outsourced to volunteers or, in the case of fundraising, often to outside parties so this is completely normal,” Warren said.

“The things that do get done by third parties, [they’re] approved by someone and someone in the PC party approved this. They said that this was okay to go out the door.”

Upon receiving the fake invoices, some Ontario residents took to social media to share their frustrations. Kingston resident Greg Gies received one such letter, notifying him he owed $800 to the party.

“Just above the address box window, in red letters, it says ‘Important Invoice Enclosed,’ right under the Ontario PC identification on the upper left-hand side,” Gies told CTV News Toronto on Wednesday.

While Gies understood that the invoice was fake, he noted that “[The body of the letter] mentions the word ‘invoice’ three times.”

York University Professor Dr. Dennis Pilon, whose area of study is political science and elections, said the strategy, while in a legal grey area, is “in very poor taste.”

“It's just ethically abhorrent because we know that there will be people, whose knowledge of things is greater or lesser and there are certainly vulnerable people who might see this and suddenly feel that they need to get this money in,” Pilon told CTV News Toronto Wednesday.

“An invoice is understood to mean you have to pay. It's not like, ‘Would you like to pay?’ or ‘We would like you to give us this money.’ It's saying, ‘You owe us money.’”

Both the Liberal Party of Ontario and the Ontario NDP have criticized the PCs for the move, calling for an investigation from Elections Ontario.

“The misleading document, which includes the word "invoice" in large text at the top, is similar to those used in "false billing scams" that aim to defraud vulnerable individuals. Scamming donors is straight out of the Donald Trump playbook,” a statement from the Ontario Liberal Party president Brian Johns said.

NDP leader Andrea Horwath echoed those statements, adding that the fake invoices “look like mail scam” and called for an investigation.

The Ontario election will be held on or before June 2, 2022.

-With files from CTV Toronto's Colin D'Mello