The lawyer for the Council of Canadians wrote to the electoral agency’s lawyer on Wednesday, asking for documents and statistics that could help bolster claims that pre-recorded and live calls made to voters suppressed enough votes to change the outcome in the ridings.
Elections Canada has stayed mum about the investigation since Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand appeared before a committee hearing in March. The agency refuses to give new information about the status of the investigation in Guelph and other ridings.
Lawyer Steven Shrybman hopes to pierce the veil of secrecy surrounding the investigation by requesting full disclosure of the court orders obtained by Elections Canada investigators.
Some production orders obtained by the investigator probing the “Pierre Poutine” calls in Guelph have already been made public. But the documents give no indication whether Elections Canada is actively pursuing the approximately 800 complaints received from voters in 200 ridings across that Mayrand cited in March.
Shrybman wants to know if other production orders have been filed. He says the sworn statements could “describe the nature and extent of incidents of voter suppression activities that are alleged to have taken place during the Election, and describe as well the steps taken by the perpetrators to conceal their actions and identities.”
This evidence, he wrote to Elections Canada’s lawyer, Barbara McIsaac, will help determine the extent of voter suppression and “is also relevant to the question of which party should bear the onus given the clandestine nature of the conduct at issue.”
McIsaac couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.
Shrybman also wants Mayrand to provide updated numbers of the complaints received, broken down by riding, with descriptions of the alleged calls, the time of day of the calls, and information about whether they were received on land lines or cellular phones.
Mayrand told a parliamentary committee in March that there were 250 active files open with the Commissioner of Canada Elections, who is charged with investigating complaints. Shrybman wants an update on this figure, along with a copy of all public court records related to the investigation.
The Council of Canadians is sponsoring applications in Federal Court that seek to overturn the results in seven ridings, all won by Conservatives, with margins of victory ranging between 26 votes and more than 1,800.
The request for help from Elections Canada is unusual as the agency is named as a respondent in the seven cases. But Shrybman notes in his letter that Mayrand told the parliamentary committee on Procedure and House Affairs that his agency would function like an “amicus curiae” — a friend of the court — and provide assistance in this case.
So far, the Council’s case is based on affidavits sworn by the people in each riding, a poll commissioned by the group, and testimony from a call centre worker from Thunder Bay.
The Conservatives sought to have the cases thrown out, but last month, the court agreed to let the cases to proceed. Oral arguments in the case could be heard in October.
As a matter of policy, Elections Canada does not comment on ongoing investigations, so most of the information about its probe into fraudulent and deceptive calls during the last election has come from affidavits filed by investigators seeking court-ordered access to records, mostly having to do with robocalls that misdirected voters in Guelph on election day.
After media reports revealed an apparent pattern of similar calls in ridings across Canada, the agency was inundated by reports from the public, and investigator told witnesses in April that the agency intended to trace calls using phone records, as the agency did in Guelph. Since then, though, there have been no applications for court orders made public.
Critics have complained that the agency has been unenthusiastic about investigating fishy phone calls in the past. Investigators did not track down a mysterious 2008 robocall that urged NDP supporters to vote for a candidate who had withdrawn from a tight four-way race in Saanich-Gulf Islands.
And in February, the agency wrote to former MP Joe Volpe, who had complained that his supporters were targeted by fake Liberal calls seemingly designed to suppress voters in Eglinton-Lawrence.
Deceptive calls that appeared to come from the United States “do not in themselves provide a basis to believe that an offence has occurred,” the agency wrote, although they later wrote back to say that the complaint would be assessed “in the context of the wider review.”
With the robocalls investigation under way, the former Commissioner of Canada Elections, William Corbett, left his job earlier this summer and was replaced by a former justice department bureaucrat. Elections Canada said Corbett’s departure had been in the works for months and would have no bearing on the office’s work.
The robocalls investigation has put Elections Canada under enormous pressure, with Conservative supporters complaining that the agency is leaking to the media and opposition supporters suggesting that the government may somehow manage to block a proper investigation.
The agency has shown little apparent interest in investigating allegations that some donors to Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro’s 2008 election campaign were reimbursed by an electrical company owned by his cousin. A lawyer representing a donor says he offered to provide details of the alleged scheme in exchange for immunity from prosecution but was rebuffed by Elections Canada’s legal counsel. Del Mastro has said he knows nothing of the allegations and his cousin denies he reimbursed anyone.
The New Democrats say the allegations exceed Elections Canada mandate and have asked Justice Minister Rob Nicholson to refer the case to the RCMP and ask a federal prosecutor to oversee the investigation. That request has been ignored.
Shrybman said he is not asking Elections Canada to disclose the identity of the complainants or specific information about the substance of the complaints. He suggested that the lawyers cooperate with the court to protect any confidential information.
So far, Shrybman has not made a motion to compel Elections Canada to hand over the information requested.
Original Article
Source: ottawa citizen
Author: GLEN MCGREGOR AND STEPHEN MAHER
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