This Globe and Mail story looks at Conservative Party efforts to mine a deep vein of social conservatism in many ethnic communities through their campaign against same-sex marriage.

An excerpt::

She appears, on the surface, to be as sweet as the Chinese New Year's candy she is hawking on East Pender Street in the heart of Vancouver's bustling Chinatown.

Liang Qiong smiles when discussing the weather. She giggles when talking about her grandchildren. But the sugar dissolves when the topic of same-sex marriage comes up.

"To me," she says, "it is wrong to see a man with another man. I definitely disagree that it should be called 'marriage.' Marriage is for producing children."

So hard-line is this soft-spoken 57-year-old shopkeeper, in fact, that she suggests that those who would make such mockery of a sacred institution deserve punishment akin to that once dished out to adulterers in her native province of Guangdong — that they be tied in bamboo cages and drowned in the river.

People like Mrs.Qiong are at the heart of Conservative Leader Stephen Harper's strategy of gaining support from traditional Liberal voters by enlisting ethnic communities to fight the federal government's same-sex legislation.

"I am certain," says Mrs. Qiong, who makes it clear she could never support the Liberals on same-sex marriage, "that more than 90 per cent of Chinese would agree with me."

Mr. Harper's tactics stem, in part, from a survey conducted by the Conservative Party before last month's Victoria caucus meeting. According to party sources, the poll, which did not include Quebec voters, found that the governing Liberals were supported by 31 per cent of decided voters compared with 28 per cent for the Tories.

More importantly, however, pollsters asked how many of those voters would consider leaving the Liberal Party if it supported same-sex marriage.

What they found startled them.

A full six percentage points of Liberal supporters said they would consider exiting their party. By contrast, Tory support dropped by only two percentage points when supporters were asked whether they would drift away should the caucus oppose the bill.

Party officials concluded that the six-percentage-point drop for the Liberals was probably made up of small-c ethnic supporters, and decided at that point to begin running controversial newspaper ads opposing gay marriage.