Investigators recently contacted voters with specific questions about their home telephone providers, in an apparent attempt to electronically trace incoming calls they received leading up to the May 2 vote.
The interviews suggest the agency is using the same investigative techniques in tracing fraudulent "live" calls that it used to track the "Pierre Poutine" robocall sent to thousands of voters in Guelph, Ont.
Investigators have contacted voters in Nipissing-Timiskaming, the most closely contested federal riding in the last election, where Conservative candidate Jay Aspin unseated Liberal incumbent Anthony Rota by 18 votes.
Two weeks ago, Elections Canada investigator John Dickson — a former RCMP inspector with a pilot's licence — flew up to Mattawa, Ont., in Nipissing-Timiskaming in his own plane to interview Ken Ferance and Linda Hearst, who share an address and a phone.
During the campaign, Hearst received a voter-identification call from the Conservatives, to which she responded negatively. On election day, after he had voted, Ferance, 66, received a call from a 647 area code — in Toronto — that claimed to be from Elections Canada, telling him that his polling station had moved to a location about 20 kilometres away.
"I said to him you're obviously a government employee, because that information is totally wrong," said Ferance. "It's wrong because A, I just voted, B, I live next door to the voting station, and C, I can still see people coming and going."
Ferance said two Elections Canada workers at the polling station told him other voters reported receiving the same kind of call.
Ferance and Hearst met Dickson at the Mattawa airport and drove to a local restaurant, where he interviewed them about the call. He later sent them an affidavit for their signatures.
Dickson told Ferance that his joke about government workers was significant, because it demonstrated that the caller claimed to be from Elections Canada. He also said that the agency "would try their best to try to track the phone records," said Ferance.
Ferance said Dickson discussed evidence of a Thunder Bay call centre worker who has reported to Elections Canada that she made calls telling people their polling station had moved.
During the last few days before the election, Annette Desgagne became so concerned about the calls she and her colleagues were making that she asked her sister to report her concerns to the RCMP. She recalled calling into Nipissing-Timiskaming, because she needed help with the pronunciation.
Desgagne was employed by Responsive Marketing Group, the Conservatives' main call-centre provider. RMG has said in a statement that they only made calls to identified Conservative supporters and did not make calls telling people their polling station had moved.
Ferance said Dickson said it was likely that an investigation would take many months, and end without a conviction.
"He said most of these are agreements reached out of court," Ferance said.
Elections Canada often settles violations of the Elections Act by entering into compliance agreements with party volunteers or local campaigns. In such agreements, the offending party takes responsibility for their actions and agrees to terms and conditions that ensure compliance with the law in the future.
Ferance is one of the electors named in a series of legal challenges launched by the Council of Canadians that alleges fraudulent calls affected the outcome of the vote in Nipissing-Timiskaming and six other ridings across the country.
Another elector involved in the litigation, Peggy Walsh Craig, said she was called last week by an Elections Canada investigator seeking details about her phone provider. She told him it was Cogeco, she said, and was left with the impression he would take steps to obtain the phone records from the company.
Rota, the riding's former MP, is not directly involved in the litigation, but he said he's heard from people in the area about increased activity by Elections Canada investigators recently.
"I understand they've been fairly active. I've had people tell me they've been called over the last few weeks," Rota said. "From what I've heard, they want to prove something but without the (telephone) records, it's hard to prove anything."
Investigators likely will require court orders to compel a list of different telephone companies to produce the data on incoming calls. Phone companies typically keep billing records for inbound long-distance calls but records of local calls may not be tracked by switching equipment.
In each case, the investigator would have to swear a statement, called an Information to Obtain, to back up the request for the production orders. If the orders are granted by the court, the billing records could help investigators trace the calls to their source.
Elections Canada does not discuss specifics of ongoing investigations.
RMG declined on Wednesday to say whether Elections Canada has served the firm with a production order to obtain recordings of pre-election calls or the scripts used by callers.
RMG and the Conservatives say they have never made voter-suppression calls.
One voter in the Ontario federal riding Nickel Belt says Elections Canada investigator Andre Thouin told him he was unable to retrieve the phone records.
"When the commissioner's office investigated, Bell didn't have the records," said Adam Caldwell-Toews, who had complained about an election day robocall claiming to be from Elections Canada.
The call said his polling station had been moved from a location near his home, where he lives with his mother, to Chelmsford, outside of Sudbury, Caldwell-Toews said.
Four or five days before the vote, Caldwell-Toews said, his mother received a live call asking whether the Conservatives could count on her support. His mother, a Liberal Party member, said no.
Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey said Wednesday that Elections Canada has not served the party with production orders.
"We have proactively reached out to Elections Canada and offered to assist them in any way we can," he said. "That includes handing over any documents or records that may assist them."
The Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia News reported recently that Elections Canada investigators have been asking questions about activities in the party's election war room, but DeLorey has stated that the party is not being investigated.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher
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