“In my view this is something that can be handled at the level of Elections Canada and the RCMP. More information will come to the fore and I’m confident that they’ll be able to handle it,” Mr. Kingsley told The Hill Times in an interview last week as the growing controversy over alleged electoral fraud in the last election continued to grow. “We simply have to get to the bottom of it.”
Information on Elections Canada’s ongoing investigation of telephone tactics used last spring continued to surface last week as media reported that the agency was focusing on the Guelph, Ont. riding, where many residents reported automated calls directing them to non-existent polling stations on election day.
In last May’s Guelph contest Liberal incumbent Frank Valeriote defeated Conservative candidate Marty Burke by a significant margin of 6,322 votes, or 10.7 percentage points.
However, that election was marred by a number of dirty tricks allegations, including a ballot box grab at a University of Guelph advance polling station by Mr. Burke’s then-director of communications Michael Sona. Following the election Mr. Sona went on to serve as an assistant to Conservative MP Eve Adams (Mississauga-Brampton South, Ont.) before resigning on Feb. 24 after being implicated in media coverage of the scandal.
Tory-linked and Edmonton-based telemarketing firm Racknine has been identified as having delivered client-uploaded phone messages directing voters to non-existent polling stations in the southern Ontario riding. Racknine president Matt Meier said that his company only broadcasted messages that had been provided by a client using a disposable cell phone and the pseudonym Pierre Poutine of Separatist St. in Joliette, Que. Mr. Meier also denied having knowledge of illegal phone calls placed by his company and said his company is fully cooperating with the Elections Canada investigation.
Since Postmedia’s Stephen Maher and the Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor broke the story of Elections Canada’s ongoing investigation on Feb. 23 employees of Responsive Marketing Group’s Thunder Bay-based call centre have come forward saying that they were asked to make similar calls in the days prior to the election. The elections monitor is now reportedly investigating these claims as well.
A number of campaigns reported that voters in their ridings had been the targets of apparent vote-suppression campaigns during the last election. Different types of phone calls had been reported in the lead up to May 2, 2011. Reports of rude phone calls impersonating Liberal volunteers began to grab headlines in the weeks before the election, with then-Liberal MP Joe Volpe being among the first to raise the issue in the Toronto riding of Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont. The former long-serving Liberal MP was defeated by current Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver in that contest by a margin of 4,036 votes, or 8.3 per cent of the vote.
On the eve of the election there were numerous local news stories, particularly from southern Ontario, reporting calls claiming to come from Elections Canada directing voters to non-existent polling stations.
The Conservative Party won its first majority government as a reunited centre-right party on May 2, earning 166 seats by way of 5,832,401 ballots cast in their favour—39.6 per cent of the popular vote. New Democrats won 103 seats from 4,508,474 votes, or 30.63 per cent of popular vote. The Liberals took 34 seats from 2,783,175 votes, or 18.91 per cent of ballots cast nationally.
Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand’s August post-election report to House Speaker Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) disclosed that the elections monitor had received more than 1,000 complaints related to the election, including “crank calls designed to discourage voting, discourage voting for a particular party, or incorrectly advise electors of changed polling locations.”
Elections Canada has disclosed little information on the ongoing investigation, but last Friday acknowledged that it was investigating allegations of robocall-based electoral fraud in the 41st election, and reported that it had received 31,000 more complaints from across the country in recent weeks, a figure Mr. Kingsley called “unprecedented.”
There was little media coverage of the complaints of vote suppression following the election until Mr. Maher and Mr. McGregor’s Feb. 23 story revealed that Elections Canada and the RCMP were investigating fraudulent phone calls in the last election and that the Conservative Party was conducting its own internal probe. The opposition has seized on the story, supplying their own lists of ridings that they say were targeted by Conservative black-ops. By the end of last week media reports put their count of compromised ridings as high as 69.
The Hill Times has compiled a list of 57 ridings, based on media reports and the political parties, that have been publicly cited as targets of phone-based election fraud by current Members of Parliament. Of these ridings, Conservatives hold 36, NDP 12, the Liberals 7, the Bloc 1 and the Greens 1.
Some members of the opposition have questioned the legitimacy of the Tory majority given the allegations. The Conservatives gained 23 seats in the 2011 election over the previous federal election to give Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) his first majority government. Had they lost in 12 of those electoral districts it would have been another minority Conservative government.
Of the 36 ridings in question that the Conservatives won in the last election, 13 ridings were carried by margins of less than 10 per cent. Eight of those ridings were determined by less than five per cent, and three were determined by less than one per cent.
The growing controversy has put the governing Tories on the defensive. Conservative MPs have made an effort to voice their support and cooperation with any Elections Canada investigation while attempting to brand the opposition as sore losers running a smear campaign.
“The Conservative Party of Canada ran a clean and ethical campaign and would never tolerate such activity. The party was not involved with these calls and if anyone on a local campaign was involved they will not play a role in a future campaign. Voter suppression is extremely serious and if anything improper occurred those responsible should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. We spent the entire campaign identifying supporters and we worked hard to get them out to vote. Our job is to get votes out, we do not engage in voter suppression,” said Jenni Byrne, director of political operations for the Conservative Party who served as the party’s 2011 national campaign manager, in a written statement soon after the story of Elections Canada’s investigation broke.
Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver (Eglinton-Lawrence, Ont.) defended his campaign from suggestions that it had anything to do with crank calls or other phone-based dirty trickery in the last election.
“I understand there’s an investigation and we’re very pleased there’s an investigation,” Mr. Oliver said following Question Period last Monday. “If anyone did anything that’s illegal they’re going to have to bear the brunt of the law.”
Conservative MP Michael Chong (Wellington-Halton Hills, Ont.) condemned the allegations of electoral fraud as “reprehensible” in a statement before the House last Thursday, and urged Elections Canada and the RCMP to “expeditiously conduct and conclude their investigation, so that those responsible are held accountable.”
But as the list of ridings purporting misleading calls from Elections Canada grows, opposition MPs have begun to question whether the elections monitor has the power to get to the bottom of the allegations.
Liberal leader Bob Rae (Toronto Centre, Ont.) said he was critical of Elections Canada’s slow response to complaints that had been filed in the Toronto riding of St. Paul’s during the last election.
“It’s not a transparent process and I’m troubled. I don’t believe that they have sufficient resources,” said Mr. Rae, who pointed out that in Oct. 6 testimony to the House Procedure Committee Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand had asked for his agency to be given broader powers. “You need to have an RCMP investigation that’s doing that, and you also have to look at the possibility that if we don’t get to the bottom of this we need to have a public inquiry.”
Mr. Mayrand did request greater powers at the Oct. 6 hearing, but the request had little relation to investigating electoral fraud. Mr. Mayrand requested that his agency have the ability to test electronic voting, improve the transparency of campaign financing, and participate in cross-jurisdictional ventures with other agencies.
The last major investigation Elections Canada conducted was over the so-called “in-and-out” scandal in the 2006 election, a story Mr. McGregor and Tim Naumetz, now a reporter for The Hill Times broke. After an investigation that spanned more than four years, the Conservatives agreed they were guilty of inadvertent and limited non-compliance with the Elections Act and paid a $50,000 fine. In return for the admission, charges of wilfully violating party spending limits against Senators Irving Gerstein and Doug Finley, and party officers Mike Donison and Susan Kehoe, were dropped.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich Gulf Island, B.C.) also urged for a public inquiry into the elections fraud allegations. Two weeks after the May 2 election, Ms. May wrote to Mr. Mayrand urging him to undertake a full investigation in the allegations that attempts were made to prevent electors from voting—a violation of Sec. 281 of the Canada Elections Act.
Last week, Ms. May told The Hill Times that she was confident that Elections Canada takes such complaints seriously, but said that the Prime Minister had a responsibility to investigate the state of Canada’s electoral system.
“This was illegal activity on a well-orchestrated, widespread basis intended to deprive people of their right to vote,” Ms. May said. “[Mr. Harper] should be as angry about this as Paul Martin was about the sponsorship scandal. He may be wiser, politically, but it doesn’t speak well of him if that’s his strategy.”
Former prime minister Paul Martin launched a public inquiry into unaccountable spending on advertising in Quebec during his predecessor Jean Chrétien’s government. Led by Justice John Gomery, the commission’s final report directly implicated the Liberal Party in the scandal and has contributed to nearly a decade of Liberal demise from its former standing as Canada’s “natural governing party.”
“[P]eople think that we’re maybe overstepping by calling for a public inquiry, but the public’s confidence in their electoral system is being seriously compromised and they may be doing permanent damage,” said NDP MP Pat Martin (Winnipeg Centre, Man.) following last Thursday’s Question Period. “They’re looking at this and just shaking their head and that’s where the value of a full public inquiry would be. It’s to try and restore the confidence of the Canadian electorate that this isn’t goddamn Zimbabwe.”
Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro (Peterborough, Ont.), who serves as Parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, rebuffed opposition calls for a government-sanctioned public inquiry into the scandal following last Thursday’s meeting of the House Ethics Committee.
“There are no grounds for a public inquiry. You either believe in Canada’s electoral system and Elections Canada as the agency that oversees elections, or perhaps you’re suggesting that we adopt another system,” Mr. Del Mastro told The Hill Times. “The system that Canada has is Elections Canada is the agency that’s charged with overseeing Canada’s elections. They have investigative ability and authority to do so. They are undertaking that, and we encourage anyone with any information in this regard to bring it forward to them.”
Mr. Kingsley, who headed Elections Canada for more than 15 years, disputed allegations that the organization’s investigatory power was too limited to get to the bottom of the electoral fraud claims.
“The chief electoral officer has the statutory authority to spend money,” explained Mr. Kingsley in an interview last week with The Hill Times. “[U]nder that law he can spend whatever sums are required in pursuing the objectives of the statute…. The authority is used regularly, and obviously when there are more activities of a kind, such as investigations, the money is made available for that purpose.”
In addition to having the ability to fund investigations as necessary, Elections Canada also employs at least 25 investigators nationwide and has a memorandum of understanding with the RCMP to collaborate in enforcing the Canada Elections Act.
NDP House Leader Joe Comartin (Windsor-Tecumseh, Ont.) has also criticized Elections Canada, pointing out that he had filed a complaint with the agency after his wife received a fraudulent call on May 2.
“I have been disappointed with Elections Canada. They’ve never got ten back to us, to myself or my wife or my campaign until we heard this week that they had used the information we gave them in the affidavit in November in Alberta,” Mr. Comartin told media following last Thursday’s Question Period. “We had done a follow-up with them on either the third or the fourth to see what they were doing and were given some bland assurances that they would pass it on to either Ottawa and Toronto and they would take care of it.”
Public interest organization Democracy Watch has criticized the agency for failing to provide adequate details on most of the 2,280 complaints that have been filed since the 2004 election. Elections Canada does provide a sentencing digest where legal measures were employed, but beyond that the majority of complaints are simply classified.
“This is without foundation. The commissioner of Canada Elections responds in writing to every complaint that’s received,” Mr. Kingsley replied when asked about the criticisms made by Democracy Watch. “Where a complaint justifies an investigation, the results of the investigation are shared with the complainant.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Chris Plecash
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