OTTAWA - A new tool launching today will help voters learn what federal issues are resonating in ethnic media and the potential effect on voting in this fall's election.
Andrew Griffith, a former director general with the Immigration Department, has partnered with Mirems -- a firm that monitors and translates stories from over 800 ethnic media outlets.
Together, they created a website called Diversityvotes.ca, that ties comprehensive statistics about Canada's minority communities with ethnic media stories.
Griffith says the data will provide riding-by-riding context about who is consuming multi-lingual news stories and quantify how their opinions could influence individual races.
Andres Machalski, president of Mirems, says he hopes the initiative will allow new and native-born Canadians to have a better understand the political issues being discussed and how they resonate among different ethnic groups.
The two creators say it could also shine a light on politicians or parties that target messages to individual minority groups in the hopes of winning votes in the October election.
