A lawyer and spokesman with Campaign Research, one of two Conservative-connected firms that worked for Conservative candidate Marty Burke in the Guelph, Ont., riding that is at the centre of the controversy, told The Hill Times the allegations of fraudulent calls targeting Liberal voters has “tainted everyone involved.”
“I just don’t think it’s good for anybody that this drags on,” Aaron Wudrick, general counsel for Campaign Research and a former Conservative campaign organizer, told The Hill Times on Tuesday.
“I expect it will take a while, but I’m hoping not three years or something like that, if it has to be, a few months or six months or something, but it’s in Elections Canada’s hands and I guess we’ll just have to wait,” Mr. Wudrick said.
Mr. Wudrick was commenting after Elections Canada on Monday stated that a majority of 31,000 contacts it had received since the furor over robocalls erupted last month were in the form of online petitions and form letters organized by web activist groups such as Avaaz.org and Leadnow.ca, as well as other organizations.
Although Elections Canada spokesman John Enright in general disclosed a breakdown for the total figure, he said Elections Canada would not disclose the number or content of any other complaints it had received.
“If I were Elections Canada I would want to quantify the number of complaints,” Mr. Wudrick said.
“If they could quantify, you know, ‘We received x number of calls about being sent to the wrong poll, x number of calls in the middle of the night,' I think that would go a long way to shedding more light on the scope of it too,” he said. “Right now, there’s just this speculation out there that this could be restricted to a handful of ridings, or it could be a coast-to-coast thing, and nobody knows until Elections Canada makes a comment one way or the other. ... It would be easier for an individual or a small group of individuals acting independently to do something with a handful of things, rather than, you know, say if it’s 25 or 35."
Elections Canada received its first complaints about the Guelph electoral district on election day. Fraudulent calls were dialed automatically and anonymously, through an Edmonton firm that has cooperated with the investigation, purporting to be from Elections Canada and falsely advising voters, primarily Liberal supporters, that their poll sites had changed. The calls were traced to a telephone number in Mr. Burke’s campaign, but no one from his election team has so far taken responsibility for them.
Campaign Research, involved in a controversy last year that involved misleading robocalls into the Montreal riding of Liberal MP Irwin Cotler (Mount Royal, Que.), which claimed Mr. Cotler was planning to retire, has denied any involvement in fraudulent calls in the election last May, and Mr. Wudrick said the uncertainty is difficult for his company, and other voter-contact firms who worked for the Conservatives, either identifying Conservative voter during the election campaign or contacting them to urge them to vote on election day, or both.
“We would like to have Elections Canada come out and eventually complete their investigation, so we can just move on,” Mr. Wudrick said. “It is a bit frustrating because there’s only so many times you can point out that we’ve already given our answer, and how do you deny a negative? No one has come forward with any evidence suggesting we did anything, and so I find I am repeating myself to a lot of people.”
Campaign research received a total of $389,890 from Conservative Party of Canada candidates for the voter-contact work it conducted for 39 electoral district campaigns, including some of the most important battles the party was waging. The firm's owners have close ties to members of the Conservative party, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.).
Of the 39 electoral districts, 23 involved tightly fought contests, star candidates, key northern Ontario ridings the Conservatives believed they had a chance of wresting from the NDP because of the Parliamentary battle in 2010 over the Conservative plan to dismantle the federal long-gun registry, and contests where the Conservatives intended to defeat Liberal stars.
The firm conducted voter contact for Conservative MP Bernard Trottier (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ont.), who defeated former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff by less than 3,000 votes. It also worked for the campaign of Conservative star and now MP Kellie Leitch (Simcoe-Grey) in her contest to take over the riding once held by former Conservative Minister of State Helena Guergis, whom Prime Minister Harper dismissed from the Conservative Party after controversial issues involving her husband, former MP Rahim Jaffer.
Campaign Research also worked for the campaign of Conservative Senator Larry Smith, the former CFL commissioner who quit a Senate seat prior the election and whom Mr. Harper appointed to the Senate again after he lost to Liberal MP Francis Scarpaleggia (Lac Saint Louis, Que.) by just over 2,000 votes.
The firm also worked on the campaign of Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (Eglington-Lawrence, Ont.), whose 4,000-vote defeat of former Liberal MP Joe Volpe continues to be mired in post-election allegations of impropriety, including a flood of last-minute voter registrations and harassing robocalls during the election campaign, which Mr. Volpe claims targeted Liberal voters.
As well, Campaign Research conducted robocall voter contact for Conservative MP Ted Opitz (Etobicoke Centre, Ont.), whose razor-thin election by only 26 votes is being challenged in court by the riding’s former Liberal MP, Borys Wrzesnewskyj, also amid allegations of voter harassment and irregularities.
The firm worked for Conservative candidates in three northern Ontario ridings where NDP candidates were re-elected despite their party’s pre-election position in favour of maintaining the gun registry, including Thunder Bay-Superior North, retained by NDP MP Bruce Hyer,who eventually voted against the gun registry in the Commons. Thunder Bay-Superior North is one of more than 50 ridings named by the NDP as ridings where harassing or misleading robocalls took place, or other attempts by the Conservatives to suppress the turnout of voters who supported opposition candidates.
Campaign Research also worked for unlikely clients during the election—Conservatives who stood no chance of losing their Commons seats.
Those candidates included Conservative MP Brian Jean, who won his Fort McMurray-Athabasca riding in the oilsands region of northern Alberta with 71.8 per cent of the vote. Mr. Jean’s campaign paid Campaign Research $10,500, although the firm commonly received more, with many candidates paying $15,000 for voter contact robocalls by Campaign Research.
Mr. Wudrick said the Conservative Party has an “approved” list of several firms candidates may use to conduct voter contact surveys and get out the vote, although many veteran Conservatives use their own campaign telephone banks, but there is no specific system of assigning the work.
“They wouldn’t permit a candidate to use someone who’s not on what they call, I guess, the approved list. There is a list of, I don’t know how many it is, if it’s six, or eight or 10 or something,” Mr. Wudrick said. “Anything that involves handing over data that the party considers very important, they’re going to be a lot more sensitive about who is getting their hands on that."
He said the ridings Campaign Research received were based on a "previous relationship" with the party. "For example, one of the [Campaign Research] business principals is friends with Kellie Leitch, so when it came down to doing work, she hired us. For others, if there are members of Cabinet or other influential MPs who’ve done work with us or know us or trust us, then they give recommendations to their other colleagues, and it’s the same for our competitors.”
Mr. Wudrick said contacts are also made through the firm's work for Conservatives in Ontario provincial elections.
“As far as I know, there is no sort of central planning in terms of which ridings we [the Conservatives] give to which people, it’s a decision that’s made at the local level,” Mr. Wudrick said.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
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