Elections Canada released the documents to lawyers in a Federal Court case on Wednesday, as soon as the information requested had been returned to investigators from phone service providers Shaw and Videotron.
The documents show that the investigators have been actively looking into complaints from voters who described calls directing them to the wrong polling station, and other harassing calls that purported to come from opposition parties, but which investigators believe were made by someone else.
The documents are the first concrete evidence of a widespread Elections Canada investigation into vote suppressions beyond the riding of Guelph. They detail complaints from voters in 56 separate ridings across the country: 20 in B.C., nine in Alberta, five in Manitoba, two in Ontario and 20 in Quebec.
Postmedia News and the Ottawa Citizen had previously reported that voters who had filed complaints with Elections Canada had received emails from the agency asking for the name of their phone companies.
The two Informations to Obtain, or ITOs, sworn by Elections Canada investigators were prepared to back up requests for court orders that compel the phone companies to hand over telephone records. The documents also refer to another ITO requesting similar information from Rogers based on similar complaints.
Investigator John Dickson writes that “the caller or the person or persons who caused the calls to be made intended to wilfully prevent or endeavoured to prevent an elector from voting in an election, and/or intended to influence the complainants to vote or refrain from voting for a particular candidate.”
Dickson writes that Elections Canada has received 1,147 complaints of inappropriate calls, in 247 ridings, including 252 complaints from Guelph, where the “Pierre Poutine” robocall send hundreds of voters to the wrong polling station.
Dickson notes the calls in Guelph are the subject of an investigation that is “separate, but related” to his own.
A total of 1,043 complaints are from voters who say they were directed to a wrong polling station by callers, 625 of them from live or recorded callers “claiming to emanate from Elections Canada.”
Elections Canada does not call voters to tell them their polling stations have moved.
The other calls are rude or harassing calls from people identifying themselves as Liberal or New Democrats, calling at odd hours, swearing or rudely demanding donations.
In Vancouver Island North, where Conservative John Duncan beat New Democrat Ronna-Rae Leonard by 1,827 votes, one voter reported receiving a number of “robocalls” asking her to support the NDP between the hours of 2 a.m. and 5 a.m.
Dickson says he checked with the campaigns in the ridings in question, who denied that they were making such calls.
On Aug. 7 and Aug. 30, he contacted Conservative Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton to discuss “the issue of whether the Conservative Party or its candidate … made such calls.” Hamilton agreed to put forward a request for information to party officials, Dickson said.
On Oct. 30, almost 90 days after first being contacted, Hamilton advised Dickson that he would soon be able to set up meetings.
Asked about the delay in helping investigators, Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey said Thursday that the party is working with investigators.
“As I’ve said before, we have proactively reached out to Elections Canada and offered to assist them in any way we can,” he said in an email. “That includes handing over any documents or records that may assist them. We will not comment on specifics as we do not want to compromise any part of the investigation.”
The party has previously insisted that it did not engage in voter suppression activities in the last election.
The complaints detailed in these documents are only those from people who get their phone service through Shaw or Videotron. Investigators may be waiting for returns on requests for information from other phone service providers.
Elections Canada produced these new court documents at the request of the voters who are trying to overturn the election results in six ridings through applications before the Federal Court of Canada.
The legal challenge, backed by the left-leaning advocacy group the Council of Canadians, alleges that live and pre-recorded calls suppressed enough votes to change the outcome in the six ridings, which were all won by Conservative candidates.
On Thursday, Fiona Campbell, a lawyer for the applicants, submitted a motion asking that Elections Canada investigators submit the evidence in the court documents to the federal court, which would allow them to be cross examined.
The documents handed over this week cite complaints involving three of the six ridings in the Council of Canadians case, as well as 53 other ridings.
Unlike the ITOs filed in the Guelph case, these two new ITOs are partially sealed, with the names and other identifying information about the complainants blacked out.
Dickson argues in his statement that it’s important to protect the privacy of potential complainants so they feel secure coming forward as his investigation progresses. He cites a conversation he had with a Liberal Party of Canada of BC official Donald McDonald, who “told me that he is aware of a number of potential complainants who told him they did not wish to come forward because they did not wish to be involved.”
The court orders sought in the ITOs compel the phone companies to hand over records for all calls received by a list of complainants between April 18, 2011, and election day. The Call Detail Records, or CDRs, would include the time of the call, its duration, the name of the originating carrier and routing information and the caller ID data.
Tracing each call to the person who placed it will likely require another round of court orders to compel the originating carrier to turn over their subscriber information.
The complaints detailed in the court documents are similar to complaints from voters described by Elections Canada officials in emails obtained under access-to-information officials in the days leading up to the last election, in which workers at the agency discussed Conservative “mischief” and a scam.
Those emails show that the agency twice emailed Hamilton expressing concern about the calls, but he replied that the party was engaged in normal get-out-the-vote operations.
Elections Canada had asked the parties not to communicate information about polling station locations to voters.
In a factum filed with the court last month, the Conservatives conceded that errors in identifying voters or on voters list provided by Elections Canada could have caused problems in calls intended to get-out-the-vote (GOTV).
“During GOTV calling, inaccurate data about a potential supporter could result in a caller
unintentionally providing a polling station address that is different to the location where that
supporter is supposed to vote.”
Some of the ridings where complains were reported were not close races, but others appear to show a pattern of voter-suppression calls in tight races. In Saanich-Gulf Islands, where Green Party Leader Elizabeth May was in a close race with Conservative cabinet minister Gary Lunn, five voters complained to Elections Canada that they received calls telling them their polling stations had moved, and five voters complained of poll-moving calls in Winnipeg South Centre, where Conservative Joyce Bateman beat Liberal Anita Neville.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Stephen Maher, Glen McGregor
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