MONTREAL—In the matter of the so-called voter suppression scandal, the modest thread that has come to Elections Canada and the RCMP’s attention is ultimately more important than the tapestry of alleged Conservative wrongdoing that the opposition has been busy weaving in the House of Commons.
If there is a maze of Conservative dirty tricks leading to the party’s winning election showing, the best and perhaps only hope to navigate through it may rest with finding the person that is hiding behind the bogus identity of Pierre Poutine (and/or more people like him or her).
That this individual went to great lengths to covertly mislead voters into showing up at non-existent polling stations in the Ontario riding of Guelph is so far one of the few solid elements on offer in this affair.
The fact that he or she used the services of a company that handled some of the phone outreach activities of the Conservative party is the main link between the fraudulent calls and Stephen Harper’s campaign.
But without first-hand testimony, it will be virtually impossible to ascertain whether this link is circumstantial or part of a larger network set up to suppress opposition votes in the last election.
In the absence of such evidence, the picture of a massive electoral fraud that the opposition parties have been drawing amounts more to a creative leap of faith in the Conservatives’ inclination to partisan mischief than to a tightly-knit factual narrative.
So far, the Liberals and the New Democrats have contributed more smoke than fire to the evolving voter suppression saga. In the process, they have done more to cloud the issue than to highlight it.
By indiscriminately throwing as many ridings as possible into the mix of the story for instance, the opposition parties have constructed a pattern that quickly lost any tactical sense.
The fact that ultra-safe Conservative ridings have ended up on the list of allegedly abused ridings is not conclusive proof that an orchestrated campaign of dirty tricks was not at play in the last election.
But the fact that ridings the opposition narrowly lost to the Conservatives on May 2 are on the list is also not proof that fraud was at play in the result.
As in the case of the ruling Liberals at the time of the sponsorship scandal, the Conservative case rests on the notion that unknown rogue players were at work behind the ruling party’s back.
But given how close the Conservatives kept their ear to the ground during the election and in light of the current high volume of complaints, it is hard to fathom that they would not have picked up on the covert activity especially if it originated from sources friendly to them.
The opposition case makes no allowances for human errors. Yet, over the past week, the information that some call centre employees took shortcuts with the message that they were contracted to deliver by the Conservatives has also surfaced.
Rather than introduce themselves as party callers, they sometimes misrepresented themselves as Elections Canada workers.
It is not the first time that the adversarial parliamentary dynamics — featuring an opposition only too willing to shoot at anything that moves and a government determined to stonewall queries as a matter of course — fail to shed light on a purported scandal.
The House of Commons was just as unhelpful a venue for fact-finding at the time of the sponsorship affair.
Without the work of the auditor general, the Gomery commission would have been without a roadmap.
The same would be true — as things stand today — of any public inquiry into the robo-call matter.
Canadians may never know all that they should about what took place in the muddy trenches of the last federal campaign. But if they ever get the beginning of a definitive answer, it will come from Elections Canada or the RCMP or even the media, and not from the warring parties in the Commons.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Chantal Hébert
If there is a maze of Conservative dirty tricks leading to the party’s winning election showing, the best and perhaps only hope to navigate through it may rest with finding the person that is hiding behind the bogus identity of Pierre Poutine (and/or more people like him or her).
That this individual went to great lengths to covertly mislead voters into showing up at non-existent polling stations in the Ontario riding of Guelph is so far one of the few solid elements on offer in this affair.
The fact that he or she used the services of a company that handled some of the phone outreach activities of the Conservative party is the main link between the fraudulent calls and Stephen Harper’s campaign.
But without first-hand testimony, it will be virtually impossible to ascertain whether this link is circumstantial or part of a larger network set up to suppress opposition votes in the last election.
In the absence of such evidence, the picture of a massive electoral fraud that the opposition parties have been drawing amounts more to a creative leap of faith in the Conservatives’ inclination to partisan mischief than to a tightly-knit factual narrative.
So far, the Liberals and the New Democrats have contributed more smoke than fire to the evolving voter suppression saga. In the process, they have done more to cloud the issue than to highlight it.
By indiscriminately throwing as many ridings as possible into the mix of the story for instance, the opposition parties have constructed a pattern that quickly lost any tactical sense.
The fact that ultra-safe Conservative ridings have ended up on the list of allegedly abused ridings is not conclusive proof that an orchestrated campaign of dirty tricks was not at play in the last election.
But the fact that ridings the opposition narrowly lost to the Conservatives on May 2 are on the list is also not proof that fraud was at play in the result.
As in the case of the ruling Liberals at the time of the sponsorship scandal, the Conservative case rests on the notion that unknown rogue players were at work behind the ruling party’s back.
But given how close the Conservatives kept their ear to the ground during the election and in light of the current high volume of complaints, it is hard to fathom that they would not have picked up on the covert activity especially if it originated from sources friendly to them.
The opposition case makes no allowances for human errors. Yet, over the past week, the information that some call centre employees took shortcuts with the message that they were contracted to deliver by the Conservatives has also surfaced.
Rather than introduce themselves as party callers, they sometimes misrepresented themselves as Elections Canada workers.
It is not the first time that the adversarial parliamentary dynamics — featuring an opposition only too willing to shoot at anything that moves and a government determined to stonewall queries as a matter of course — fail to shed light on a purported scandal.
The House of Commons was just as unhelpful a venue for fact-finding at the time of the sponsorship affair.
Without the work of the auditor general, the Gomery commission would have been without a roadmap.
The same would be true — as things stand today — of any public inquiry into the robo-call matter.
Canadians may never know all that they should about what took place in the muddy trenches of the last federal campaign. But if they ever get the beginning of a definitive answer, it will come from Elections Canada or the RCMP or even the media, and not from the warring parties in the Commons.
Original Article
Source: Star
Author: Chantal Hébert
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