The Responsive Marketing Group (RMG) wants the Federal Court of Canada to block attempts to force the firm to provide scripts, audio recordings and other information about calls made to voters shortly before the May 2, 2011, vote.
The request for the material was made by lawyers representing a group of applicants who are seeking to have the results of the election overturned in seven ridings — all won by Conservatives — because of allegedly misleading live and automated telephone calls.
The seven cases are being backed by the Council of Canadians, a left-of-centre advocacy group.
One of the applicants, Anette Desgagne, is a former RMG employee from Thunder Bay, Ont. She claimed in an affidavit that she and other RMG employees made calls directing voters who didn’t support the Conservatives to the wrong polling stations — an allegation the firm denies.
RMG’s chief operating officer, Andrew Langhorne, filed an affidavit in August that called Desgagne’s claims “categorically false” and referred to scripts and recordings that, he says, disprove her allegations.
In response, the applicants’ lawyer, Steven Shrybman, told Langhorne to provide this material during his cross-examination hearing.
Shrybman told Langhorne to produce the scripts used by RMG’s Thunder Bay call centre workers to make voter identification and get-out-the-vote calls leading up to the election.
He also directed Langhorne to hand over recordings of all calls made by Thunder Bay employees in the three days prior to the vote, along with a spreadsheet of corresponding information about the numbers called and the names of RMG employees who made those calls.
The directive further required Langhorne to turn over data on the number of calls RMG made in the seven ridings, as well as other statistical information.
But RMG has filed a motion seeking a court order to “relieve” Langhorne from most of Shrybman’s directive, saying it would be, among other things, “unduly onerous” to produce all the records.
The demand for records is overly broad and amounts to a “fishing expedition,” the motion says.
Instead, RMG wants the court to specify that only tapes of Desgagne be turned over and that they be subject to a confidentiality order to protect the privacy of those called.
RMG cited numerous reasons why it couldn’t provide the records, saying some are irrelevant to the cases at hand and others could damage the company commercially. The firm says some of the information is commercially sensitive and notes that a competitor, Robert Penner of polling and fundraising firm Strategic Communications, has filed an affidavit on behalf of the applicants.
Langhorne doesn’t even have access to some of the records, the motion says.
RMG, a branch of the publicly-traded iMarketing Solutions Group, served as the Tories’ primary call centre company in the last election, making voter-contact and fundraising calls using the party’s Constituent Information Management System (CIMS).
RMG has denied making any misleading calls in the election.
Elections Canada says it has received more than 1,394 complaints about misleading live calls and “robocalls” from voters in 234 ridings across the country.
While RMG fights to keep the information out of applicants’ hands, the Conservatives are attempting to quash evidence filed by pollster Frank Graves of Ekos Research.
The Council of Canadians commissioned Graves to do a poll on the effect of robocalls. He found that a significant number of opposition supporters in targeted ridings reported receiving deceptive phone calls telling them their polling stations had moved.
The Conservative candidates have filed a motion asking the court to toss out Graves’ affidavit about his poll.
The Tories allege that Graves is a Liberal partisan as evidenced by comments he made on Twitter and in TV political panels. They claim that, as an expert witness, he should have declared this alleged relationship with a party in the robocalls cases.
Graves calls the motion “flagrantly defamatory” but admitted he couldn’t take any legal action because statements made in court are privileged.
He notes that the Conservatives accused of him of bias over comments he made on CBC in 2010 but the public broadcaster’s ombudsman found no wrongdoing.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Glen McGregor
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