Last month, as part of a lawsuit seeking to overturn the election results in seven ridings, the Council of Canadians asked Elections Canada for details about the agency’s investigation into reports of calls across the country, including many that appeared to direct opposition supporters to the wrong polling stations.
The agency declined to give much detail about its investigation, but did agree to provide the left-leaning advocacy group with copies of all public documents filed in Canadian courts as part of its investigation:
On Friday, Elections Canada lawyer Audrey Nowack wrote to council lawyer Steven Shrybman, providing all documents “available as part of the public court record that relate to investigations concerning voter suppression activities alleged to have taken place during the 2011 federal general election.”
The attached documents all related to the agency’s long and frustrating investigation into a single fraudulent robocall campaign in Guelph, Ont.
The documents give no indication of what, if anything, the agency has done to get to the bottom of calls in other ridings. The agency has not sought search warrants or court orders on phone and Internet companies to produce search warrants, other than those issued in the hunt for the “Pierre Poutine” suspect behind election-day robocalls made to non-Conservative voters in Guelph.
With no sign of progress in the Poutine probe, it is possible that CRTC penalties for telemarketing violations imposed last week against Guelph Liberal Frank Valeriote could be the only sanctions imposed in the robocalls affair.
Elections Canada reported in a letter to the council that by Aug. 16, it had aggregated 1,394 complaints “alleging specific occurrences of alleged improper telephone calls” in 234 ridings. up from 700 complaints in almost 200 ridings the agency had compiled in May, when Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand testified in front of a parliamentary committee.
A wave of public complaints resulted from media reports in February and March, which prompted the agency to hire about a dozen clerical workers to compile complaints.
In April, investigators followed up with some complainants. Investigator John Dickson — a former RCMP inspector with a pilot’s licence — flew in his own plane up to Mattawa, Ont., in Nipissing-Timiskaming to interview Ken Ferance and Linda Hearst, who reported receiving a call telling them to go to the wrong polling station after they told a Conservative caller they didn’t plan to vote for that party.
At the time, Dickson told them he planned to trace the call they received, but in the court documents Elections Canada sent to the council, there are no records of applications for court orders seeking phone records beyond Guelph.
Spokeswoman Diane Benson indicated Monday that the agency isn’t planning on explaining what it’s doing or not doing in the case.
“The commissioner of Canada Elections does not confirm nor deny that a complaint has been received or that an investigation is underway,” she said. “In the case of the robocalls, there was a general confirmation from the office that an investigation was underway. But we have never confirmed a location or a particular riding. That has been the consistent response.”
Nipissing-Timiskaming is one of the seven ridings where voters are suing, aided by the council, seeking to have the election results overturned. Conservative Jay Aspin defeated Liberal incumbent Anthony Rota there by 18 votes.
In April, Annette Desgagne, a call centre worker with the main Conservative voter-contact firm, the Responsive Marketing Group, signed an affidavit alleging that she was instructed to call into that riding, among others, and give people polling station locations that she came to believe were false.
Earlier this month, RMG executive Andrew Langhorne filed an affidavit calling Desgagne’s story “categorically false,” denying that the company even called opposition supporters in the last days of the election, and referring to a review of recordings of Desgagne’s calls.
If Elections Canada had reason to believe a crime had been committed, it could get a court order for the recordings and quickly resolve the dispute about the facts, but the court orders released to the council seem to show that the agency has not made any attempt to trace that call that Ferance and Hearst received.
Ferance said Monday that he hasn’t heard from Elections Canada investigators since he was interviewed in April, but he is sure the agency will eventually get to the bottom of the calls.
“I do have confidence that they have the resources and they will eventually come to the conclusion as to who was responsible for this and bring them to justice,” he said. “I have confidence in these people.”
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: GLEN MCGREGOR AND STEPHEN MAHER
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