[In the final days of the 2006 election campaign] The door … had been opened for a final wave of attacks. Liberal outrider organizations — feminists, gay-rights activists, law professors, aboriginal leaders, environmentalists — came at us in human waves, claiming that Harper would roll back abortion rights, use the notwithstanding clause to quash gay marriage, and repudiate the Kelowna Agreement and the Kyoto Accord. [David's note: Well,Tom, your guy did, in fact, repudiate the Kelowna Agreement and Kyoto and made a half-hearted attempt at rolling back same-sex marriage!] The Conservative Party simply can't compare with the Liberals in the depth and breadth of these external linkages; Real Women and Campaign Life can't compete with Egale Canada and the National Action Committee on the Status of Women in terms of public funding and media clout. If the Conservatives can stay in power for any length of time, it should be a high priority to de-fund the support groups that the Liberals have cultivated so long with grants, subsidies, and access to the government.
From: Tom Flanagan, Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2007, p. 264
And here's one of those “outrider” groups that shut its doors on Friday.