WINNIPEG -- A Conservative Member of Parliament is being mocked online over questions about terrorism contained in a mailout to his constituents.
The flyer from Lawrence Toet asks people in his Winnipeg riding to choose between two statements -- either they agree with him that Canada needs more protection from terrorism, or they disagree and feel "terrorists are victims too."
The question prompted some acerbic parody on the social media site Reddit.
One Reddit member asked: "Do you believe in mandatory sentencing? Yes! Justice is important to me. No! I believe that child molesters should be allowed into preschools at will."
Another asked about the proposed Keystone pipeline, with two options: "Yes! It will create thousands of jobs. No! I am an environmental terrorist and should be put in prison."
Toet was not immediately available for an interview Wednesday.
A pollster who lives in Toet's Elwood-Transcona riding and who received the mailer at his home called the MP's question "preposterous."
"As a market researcher, if I had a question like this on an omnibus survey ... and then it was released to the public, I mean, people would just laugh and think it was a joke," said Curtis Brown, vice-president of Probe Research Inc.
Brown said the question was more about getting the Conservative message out about the federal government's proposed anti-terrorism law, which critics say puts the personal information of Canadians at risk.
"This is the issue that the Conservatives are hitting pretty hard right now," Brown said.
Conservatives have pointed to the terrorism threat by a number of methods. They recently posted online images of an Islamist terrorist with quotations from a threat to attack the West Edmonton Mall.
Toet is far from alone in putting loaded questions in his constituency mailouts. One from New Democrat MP Pat Martin last year asked people what they thought about "Stephen Harper's unfair election law."
Brown said the real aim of such mailouts is to identify supporters. People who respond are entered into a party database as a supporter or opponent, and will likely be asked for money or other support closer to election time, he said.
"If you say you disagree ... or you write something nasty on there, you're probably going to go on to the hostile list."
