Temporal/Spiritual

The Liberal Party of Canada celebrated another opportunity for Canadian voters to engage with the Liberals, inviting them to write best wishes to Liberal leader Justin Trudeau after the birth of his third child. Those good wishes were collected through a Liberal.ca web form, requiring the name, postal code and email address of those wishing to post congratulations to Trudeau for his proficiency in siring another heir to the Liberal throne.



Just incidentally, like any good business, the URL also functions as a track of the greeter source. "Express your excitement and happiness for the Trudeau family", entreats the site. One hangup, the page offers no opportunity to enable the actual composition of just such a message. But the webpage does host the tweet that Mr. Trudeau sent a day earlier with an adorable photograph of baby Hadrian Trudeau's hand encircling Daddy's finger.

"We actually expect that the vast majority of those who will sign will be people in our community already with whom we are already (sic) in regular contact", emailed national director Jeremy Broadhurst. And, of course, any other potential voters taken up with the joy of another birth to the Liberal Party of Canada aristocracy. And those email addresses will certainly come in handy, for the future with an election campaign in sight.

But that's all right, the Conservative Party is engaged similarly within that trend. For Prime Minister Stephen Harper's official website was similarly used to collect email addresses of potential (Ismaili) viewers who wanted to tune in for web broadcasts of those equally important social-political events when the Prime Minister and the Aga Khan, the hereditary spiritual leader of the world's Ismaili Muslim community celebrated plurality and human rights after the Aga Khan spoke in Parliament.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and His Highness the Aga Khan on stage at Massey Hall, Toronto, February 28, 2014. BERNARD WEIL / TORONTO STAR

A singular event of immense importance in recognition of the charitable enterprises that the Aga Khan's foundation operates world wide, and through which Canada distributes charitable funding to Asian and African Muslim communities. Both the Parliament Hill event and the later Toronto Massey Hall event were available online through the stephenharper.ca website, but only through registration; name and email address required.

Databases for future contact of potential supporters are invaluable to political parties, just as they are for corporations seeking to expand their business dealings and independent businesses looking for new customers. It may seem to be in poor taste to offer something that comes with a certain price; in this instance leaving oneself open to receiving repeat political messages, but this is the world we have moved into along with social media.