In recent days, the agency has spoken to at least three workers from the campaign of Conservative candidate Marty Burke, including the official agent responsible for ensuring the campaign's financial report was accurate.
Elections Canada wants to know why the costs of automated calls the campaign has admitted sending out never appeared in the campaign's expense report, as required by law.
Andrew Prescott, the deputy campaign manager, said he is co-operating with the investigation and handing over bills he received from RackNine Inc. for a series of robocalls promoting Burke events during the election.
The same company was used to transmit misleading Elections Canada calls on election day.
Prescott maintains he had no role in the fake Elections Canada calls that directed voters to the wrong polling stations.
Prescott said Monday that he had given his campaign manager invoices for the calls but could not explain why the expenses did not appear on the financial report sent to Elections Canada.
He said he used a RackNine account he held through his own company, Prescoan, to place the automated calls announcing Burke campaign events. He said he then submitted invoices to the campaign for these costs.
"I gave them to the campaign manager," Prescott said. "There was definitely no effort to hide anything or obscure anything."
There is no record of these expenses anywhere in the Burke campaign return, however.
Burke's unsuccessful campaign against Liberal incumbent Frank Valeriote was managed by Ken Morgan, a former candidate for city council in Guelph. Burke has not spoken publicly since the robocalls controversy and has not responded to emails requesting comment. Postmedia was unable to reach Morgan.
It is unclear why the Burke campaign did not report the costs Prescott said he submitted. Failing to declare campaign expenses is a breach of the Elections Act.
The detailed expense claims submitted to the Burke campaign included receipts for everything from local advertising costs, gasoline and pizza for campaign workers. But the Burke campaign's accountant, Abdul-Qayum Ali, said he never received any invoices for RackNine.
The campaign's bills typically were given by staff to Morgan and then passed on to him, said Ali who, as official agent, was responsible for ensuring the accuracy of the expense report.
Ali said he was contacted by Elections Canada last week and asked if there were any other invoices he hadn't submitted to the agency. There were not, he said.
Elections Canada's investigators have traced the fraudulent robocalls misdirecting voters in Guelph from a disposable cellphone purchased under the pseudonym "Pierre Poutine" in Joliette, Que. The phone was used to call RackNine to record the outgoing call sent to voters in Guelph.
RackNine says it was unaware its service was used to place the calls.
Prescott said he set up an account with RackNine in 2010 that he had used for other provincial and municipal election campaigns.
A sworn statement filed by Elections Canada investigator Al Mathews lists 31 calls made to RackNine from four phones associated with the Burke campaign to RackNine, including two on election day. Most of the calls were to a customer service log-in number.
In Mathews' sworn statement, he writes that it is "reasonable to conclude that the absence of an expense report . . . is inconsistent with the pattern" of the calls.
Prescott would not say how much the various calls cost.
Prescott said he has spoken with Mathews by phone and has another meeting scheduled in the near future.
Before the robocalls story first broke last month, Prescott told the Ottawa Citizen he had paid for RackNine bills himself and was reimbursed by the campaign through the $1,100 he was paid.
But an agreement signed by Morgan and Ali on March 26, at the beginning of the campaign, shows Prescott was always to be paid $1,100 as an honourium for providing "general labour" on the campaign.
Other campaign workers who had similar agreements in place were reimbursed for the costs they incurred during the course of the campaign. But there is no sign of any expenses Prescott incurred.
In a blog post in July, not long after the election, Prescott described himself as a "cellphone expert."
"Being an IT guy, and being the resident cellphone expert amongst my friends and political circles, people ask me for advice on who's got the best deals for cellphones."
The Guelph Mercury reported last week that Elections Canada, which started the investigation in May, interviewed campaign worker Michael Sona last Tuesday for the first time.
Sona, who was director of communications for the Burke campaign, made headlines during the campaign when he tried to shut down a special ballot being held for university students by trying to grab the ballot box.
He was first associated with this story when Sun TV reported that senior Conservatives believed he was a person of interest to the investigation. Sona soon resigned from his job working for Conservative MP Eve Adams.
After Defence Minister Peter MacKay suggested Sona was responsible for the misdirection in Guelph, Sona issued a statement denying it.
"I have remained silent to this point with the hope that the real guilty party would be apprehended," he said in a statement to CTV News. "The rumours continue to swirl, and media are now involving my family, so I feel that it is imperative that I respond. I had no involvement in the fraudulent phone calls, which also targeted our supporters as can be attested to by our local campaign team and phone records."
The Conservatives have steadfastly denied any knowledge of voter suppression calls by higher-ups. On Sunday, Conservative campaign chairman Guy Giorno said he hopes investigators get to the bottom of it.
"I wish Godspeed to Elections Canada and the RCMP investigators," he told CTV. "We want them to get to the bottom of this and let's hope the full weight of the law is applied to any and all."
In Mathews' sworn statement, he describes an interview with Central Poll Supervisor Laurie Rotenburg, who was running the polls at the Old Quebec Street Mall in Guelph when 150 to 200 deceived voters showed up to vote.
"He observed that many of the misdirected voters responded with anger that a dirty trick had been played," Mathews wrote. "Many were upset. Some electors just stormed out of the polling location. Several ripped up their Voter Information Card."
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher
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