The Green Star

Conservative Party “ethnic outreach”

Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has been giving tips to David Cameron’s British Tories on how to win ethnic votes. [...]

“They asked for a meeting when they learned I’d be in London,” Mr. Kenney told reporters in a conference call on Tuesday. “Obviously the Conservative Party has a partnership, certain links, with the other centre-right parties in democratic countries, like the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom.”

Mr. Cameron, who leads a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, now faces the task of trying to fight a second election, and like the Canadian Tories who spent five years in minority government, they are seeking to expand their base. But most immigrants and ethnic voters lean to his Labour opponents.

Mr. Kenney has for years assiduously courted Canada’s ethnic communities to win over voters who were once thought to be locked up by the Liberals. The Tories have not only devoted time and attention to ethnic organizations, and money to some of their causes, they have made a pitch that many new Canadians share the small-c conservative principles of the Tories.

He noted that polls show 42 per cent of voters born outside Canada supported the Tories in 2011 federal election – a greater portion than those born in the country.

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