Attention Sorosophobes/philes: We've hit the big time, y'all.

OMG OMG! You’ll never believe this — like, moments after typing up the final entry in my liveblog of the Avaaz.ca campaign launch, who should appear in front of me but a friendly neighbourbood John Baird campaign staffer, bearing a stack of freshly printed press releases bearing the fabulously evocative headline: “SHADOWY FOREIGN ORGANIZATION ATTEMPTING TO INFLUENCE CANADIAN ELECTION” – which would be awesome enough all on its own, but the subhead made it even better: Apparently – their words, not mine – a “Wall Street Billionaire” is “bankrolling [the] campaign”.

What Wall Street Billionaire might that be? Oh, my ears and whiskers, you’ll never guess — the man whose very existence can spark six American C/conservative conspiracy theories before breakfast: George Soros. Soros! We’ve finally arrived on the world stage, and can take our seat before the One World Government New World Order Star Chamber.

Except — wait, why does this release keep using the words “apparently” and “supposedly” to describe Soros involvement with Avaaz? And why doesn’t it offer any evidence to back up the claim that sinister Sorosian dollars are funding the group – or its Canadian arm – and states only that it is is “supposedly bankrolled” through MoveOn.org? I mean, even a citation from Wikipedia would be better than nothing, right? But it doesn’t even include one of those – although it does remind us that Soros made more than a billion dollars when he “broke the Bank of England” in 1992.

Anyway, the Baird campaign has filed an official complaint with Elections Canada over the involvement of this “foreign organization”, and is seeking an injunction to prevent Avaaz.ca from launching its ad campaign targeting Baird and others. (Isn’t that a lot like the ‘gag order’ on third parties that a certain former National Citizens Coalition president fought all the way to the Supreme Court?) ITQ will keep y’all posted on any and all developments.