London's Ward 10 councillor is denying playing a part in the creation of a fake website that was used to attack his political opponent during the last municipal election.
Former councillor Virginia Ridley, who was defeated in Ward 10 by Paul Van Meerbergen, went to court to find out who had registered the site domain virginiaridley.ca after the site posted criticisms of the councillor. Councillor Maureen Cassidy was also targeted by the fake website maureencassidy.ca. Ridley, in particular, was attacked for taking her child to a budget debate.
A court order, which was issued April 30, has since forced GoDaddy, the Canadian Internet Registration Authority and Wix.com to reveal that the websites were registered by Amir Farahi and Ronald Young. Farahi is one of two men who run Blackridge Strategy, a firm that worked on several campaigns in the fall, including Councillor Van Meerbergen’s.
Van Meerbergen said he was unaware of the connection between Blackridge and the attack websites until Friday.
"At no time was there anything saying that we would be going forward with any kind of negative or fake websites," he told BlackburnNews.com Friday evening. "There's no place in London politics [or] in our community for those types of websites."
Van Meerbergen pointed out that his campaign was not the only one in London to utilize Blackridge's services. The PR firm also worked on the campaign of Mayor Ed Holder, who has since denounced Blackridge.
"I, like about 11 other campaigns in the last municipal election, went to Blackridge because we had heard they were very good at developing websites for campaigns and also managing Facebook [pages] for campaigns," said Van Meerbergen. "I'm no different than the other 10 or 11 campaigns that used this company."
Ward 5 Councillor Jesse Helmer has called on Van Meerbergen to publically release his contract with Blackridge in the interest of transparency.
"Jesse Helmer -- he's not the arbiter of these kinds of things. He's a fellow councillor... but that's not his place to say these types of things," said Van Meerbergen, who added that it's laughable to think he contractually negotiated a smear campaign with Blackridge. "You'd have to be a bit moronic to put in a contract that you're going to spend, let's just say, $600 on nefarious, fake websites... Why would that be in a contract."
Van Meerbergen said he has "never taken the approach of trying to run down the opponent" and it was the issues in his ward that decided the election, not the fake websites.
"When really look at the big scheme of things, what is a fake website going to do to tip the balance in an election? Not very much," he said. "The reason why there was a change in Ward 10 was because of the issues [and] nothing to do with a fake website."
Van Meerbergen added that he would definitely "think twice" before rehiring Blackridge to help with future campaigns.
-With files from Scott Kitching
