"Vaughan Working Families" the latest right wing farce in Ontario

In a turn of events that is pretty staggering even by the truth adverse standards of the right and the Doug Ford government, an epic fiasco is unfolding in Ontario around a, possibly fictional, "community" group Vaughan Working Families.

In case you have not heard of them, Vaughan Working Families paid significant sums of money to place full page ads in some of Toronto's largest newspapers, the Toronto Star, the Globe and Mail and the National Post this past weekend. The ads claimed to be from a group of parents angry at Ontario's teachers for their escalating job actions against the Ford government and its cuts to education. In them the group demanded that teachers stop "using students as pawns" and one version had an alleged local mother holding up a "report card" giving the teachers and their unions a "failing grade".

This would be some much needed support given that the Ford government is rather badly losing the battle in the court of public opinion. But, as the left-leaning website PressProgress discovered, on further investigation the ads and the group with apparently deep pockets that bought them don't appear to be entirely kosher.

First:

The ads are paid for by a mystery group calling itself “Vaughan Working Families,” although the group lists no contact information, has no website and there appears to be no evidence the shadowy parents’ group exists apart from its expensive ads.

and it turns out the "mother" not only is not a parent in Ontario, she does not even live in Canada:

Leszek Glasner, a professional photographer who lives in Poland, said the woman presented as the face of “Vaughan Working Families” is his wife.
“Actually she is my wife and she is a semi-professional model,” the photographer told PressProgress. “She is from Poland too.”
Glasner confirmed the photo used in the anti-teacher attack ad is a digitally altered copy of one he sells on Shutterstock, an online stock photo service, and made clear neither he nor his wife have any opinions on Ontario provincial politics.
“We both have nothing to do with the teacher strike in Canada,” Glasner said.

Social media had a field day with what certainly seems to be a less than totally legitimate intervention in the debate.

In the aftermath of this total farce a complaint has been filed with Ad Standards Canada by Norm Di Pasquale, a Toronto Catholic District School Board trustee and NDP MPP Taras Natyshak has called for an investigation by Elections Ontario. 

Meanwhile, the bombastic and reality challenged Premier Doug Ford has come under scrutiny for claiming “I have had numerous, numerous texts from teachers saying ‘I don’t want to be doing this,’”, implying the union is forcing the job action on them. Not only is there zero evidence for this generally -- in fact the unions were given very strong strike mandates by their members  -- he is refusing to back it up by producing any of the alleged texts:

When CTV News Toronto asked the premier’s office for a sample of the supportive text messages on Monday, a spokesperson stated that the office is “not going to be making these text messages public.”
“We are not going to share any text messages that he’s seen or received,” Ford’s Press Secretary Ivana Yelich said.
While the premier’s office concedes that Ford raised the text messages, making them a relevant part of the conversation, it said it will not share them with the media.
When asked for a reason, the premier’s office said it didn’t need to provide one. 

Is the group anything more that an invention by some wealthy backers of the Ford government? Does Ford have any actual texts from teachers? It does not seem likely in either case, especially given the government's track record to date.