Without directly challenging a statement from Mr. Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) last week that neither he nor the Conservative Party had any knowledge of the electoral interference, which PostMedia and the Ottawa Citizen reported last week is under Elections Canada investigation, opposition MPs told The Hill Times Mr. Harper has an obligation to divulge all he knows now about the affair.
“Given that Stephen Harper is clearly a control freak, who controls just about everything that goes on, it’s not terribly likely that he wouldn’t have known,” Green Party leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.) told The Hill Times.
“One has to say it’s possible that he didn’t know, of course it’s possible,” Ms May said. “Stephen Harper has said he didn’t know, and what I’m saying is if you look at the scale of the scandal and the offence to democracy this is, it’s far bigger than the sponsorship scandal.”
Ms. May challenged Mr. Harper to do what former Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin did in 2004, after former auditor general Shelia Fraser reported explosive details about government sponsorship money funnelled to Liberal Party members in Quebec, and call a formal inquiry.
“Paul Martin told the public he didn’t know about the sponsorship scandal, but he didn’t leave it there, he called a full inquiry,” Ms May said. “Stephen Harper is called upon to do exactly the same thing, a full, independent, well-funded inquiry to find out who was responsible, who paid for it, how was it orchestrated and—if it was within the Conservative Party, which all evidence suggests that it was—how high up the chain of command did that go?”
At a press conference last week in Nunavut, Mr. Harper told reporters he didn't know about the robocalls. "I have absolutely no knowledge on anything about these calls, but obviously if there is anyone who's done anything wrong, we will expect that they will face the full consequences of the law," he said.
In an answer to NDP interim leader Nycole Turmel's (Hull-Aylmer, Que.) question on whether the government would call byelections in the affected ridings "to restore voter trust," Mr. Harper said, “The Conservative Party of Canada has denied such allegations.” In addition, he said, "We don’t have any such information. If the NDP has—and I am not sure that is the case—then the NDP must turn it over to Elections Canada.”
Surprise at Mr. Harper’s lack of knowledge about the affair—as he reacted to questions in the Commons on Monday by advising the opposition parties to refer any information they had about attempts at voter suppression to Elections Canada—was based in part on past descriptions about Mr. Harper’s control over the Conservative Party by one of his closest former campaign strategists and advisers, University of Calgary professor Tom Flanagan.
As well, Jenni Byrne, a top former aide in Mr. Harper’s Prime Minister’s Office and long-time senior Conservative Party organizer who was also one of the senior organizers behind his successful 2002 campaign for Canadian Alliance leadership, was director of the Conservative campaign last year when the controversial telephone campaign took place.
The “robocalls” involved telephone calls placed to opposition party voters by callers who claimed to represent Elections Canada and wrongly advised voters the locations of their polling stations had changed. The first reports of such calls were filed with Elections Canada on voting day.
The PostMedia and Ottawa Citizen news report said the targeted voters were primarily Liberal supporters, and the calls took place in ridings where the race was expected to be close.
In a statement last week, Ms. Byrne said the Conservative Party was not involved. "The Conservative Party of Canada ran a clean and ethical campaign and would never tolerate such activity. The Party was not involved with these calls and if anyone on a local campaign was involved they will not play a role in a future campaign," she said. "Voter suppression is extremely serious and if anything improper occurred those responsible should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We spent the entire campaign identifying supporters and we worked hard to get them out to vote. Our job is to get votes out, we do not engage in voter suppression."
Prof. Flanagan published a revealing book, Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power, about Mr. Harper’s backroom control, tactics and success as leader of the Conservative Party following the merger of Canadian Alliance and the old Progressive Conservative Party in 2003, and backroom details of the 2004 election. A revised 2009 edition included an assessment of the party’s performance under Mr. Harper in the 2006 and 2008 federal elections.
The book has several citations about Ms. Byrne and her role in Mr. Harper’s leadership campaign as well as Ontario Conservative Senator Doug Finley's. Sen. Finley managed the 2006 and 2008 federal Conservative campaigns but, stricken with cancer, stepped aside for the 2011 election. Ms. Byrne replaced Sen. Finley and he held an advisory position as director emeritus.
Sen. Finley was one of three top Conservative Party officials convicted of Canada Elections Act breaches last year in a plea-bargain settlement over Elections Canada charges that the party exceeded its national campaign expense limit for the 2006 election by wrongfully transferring $1-million worth of advertising costs to more than 60 selected candidate campaigns.
“Harper’s team is now the biggest, best-funded, best-organized political machine in Canada,” Prof. Flanagan wrote in the revised edition of his book following the 2008 election.
Prof. Flanagan wrote that the campaign team "never rests and that "a campaign manager reporting directly to the leader, not to a committee, is always in place."
Michael Sona, a campaign worker for Mr. Valeriote’s Conservative opponent, Marty Burke, resigned from his position as an assistant to Conservative MP Eve Adams (Mississauga-Brampton South, Ont.) last week; but no link was made to the robocalls, and Conservatives suggested the tactics might have been the result of overly zealous individual campaigns.
Like Ms. May, Liberal MP Frank Valeriote (Guelph, Ont.), whose constituents placed several thousand complaints about fraudulent and harassing telephone calls on election day, said he could not question Mr. Harper’s insistence he does not know about the tactics. “I can’t speculate on how much Mr. Harper knew or didn’t know,” said Mr. Valeriote.
"There are two things I know of, there’s a culture in the party that condones and permits this kind of conduct, to the extent that if you can get away with it, nobody is going to say anything," he said. “Secondly, I noticed in the House today that not any effort was made on the government’s part to say that the conduct was reprehensible, that absolutely anybody would be admonished. ... They did not say that they would do everything conceivable possible to find out who the culprits were. They simply said, ‘Let Elections Canada do their work, and provide them with information.”
Mr. Valeriote added that the "sophistication, the breadth of the base of this" goes futher than a few people to complete. “They needed access to not just voter lists, but identified voter lists, the central database, and unless anyone at any level has access to that voter list, and I doubt they do, except in central, somebody in central had to release that information to those that are currently being alleged to have perpetrated this fraud, and coordinated it, and they needed the resources to do it,” he said.
NDP MP Charlie Angus (Timmins-James Bay, Ont.) also declined to make a judgment about Mr. Harper’s familiarity with what might have happened in Conservative Party headquarters during the campaign.
“The Prime Minister made a really clear statement today, and his underlings said the same thing—‘If you can find the evidence, if you can catch us, go ahead.’ That does not sound like a Prime Minister who’s willing to get to the bottom of this,” Mr. Angus said.
“So the question is, if the Prime Minister isn’t willing to expose what could be widespread criminal activity and fraud, then does he not think it’s a priority, or does he think this goes much higher up the chain of command?”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
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