But Conservative MP Daryl Kramp (Prince Edward-Hastings, Ont.), who described the party-supplied information from the central Conservative database in Ottawa as a “phenomenal asset,” said his campaign nonetheless supplemented the party’s computer-generated list with information gathered locally by his own riding association and campaign organizers.
The question of central Conservative Party control over voter identification information has become a new element in the controversy over allegedly fraudulent or misleading robocalls in the federal election last year, following statements from Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) and other senior Conservative MPs and officials that the party was not involved.
Conservative MP Maurice Vellacott (Saskatoon-Wanuskewin, Sask.) told The Hill Times on Tuesday the party’s central campaign headquarters took charge of voter identification information and voter lists for the Conservative candidates in all 308 electoral districts, providing the local campaigns with updated voter identification lists, including voter phone numbers and addresses—even though dozens of the local campaigns paid thousands of dollars each, primarily to two Conservative connected voter-contact firms, to collect the voter identification information themselves.
“They have people that have considerable experience at this kind of thing, and they’re doing it for all these ridings across the country, and they have to keep doing that as the campaign progresses too,” Mr. Vellacott said.
Candidates and parties have traditionally used voter ID to urge their supporters to go to the polls and cast ballots. But the robocall controversy, for the first time in a noticeable and potentially significant way in Canada, has raised a storm of allegations that voter identification was used last May in Conservative attempts to suppress the turnout of voters who support other parties, primarily the Liberals.
Several Conservative MPs The Hill Times interviewed on Wednesday said they were unaware whether the Conservative Party furnished their campaigns with voter identification information, through its master computer system in Ottawa through internet links to Conservative campaign data bases in all 308 electoral districts, or did not answer the question directly. Others declined to stop for brief interviews on their way into the Commons chamber for Question Period.
Mr. Vellacott did not attend Question Period on Wednesday.
Mr. Kramp initially seemed to be indicating in an interview that the Conservative Party did not have control over voter identification information in his electoral district. Asked if that was the case, that the party did not get involved, he confirmed it did, through the party’s constituency information management system known as CIMS.
“No, I access their, the CIMS base, we have access to that but of course I also supplement it and augment that with my own information,” Mr. Kramp told The Hill Times.
He said his campaign always validates and uses voter information on lists it compiles in his riding, on top of the centrally-provided lists, to ensure it is reliable.
“We get what we can [from the party], but we have 3,000 people a year die in my riding,” Mr. Kramp said. “The last thing I want to do is have a call out to an individual and ask them to come out and potentially support or go to an event and that, and have that person not there. No, no, we validate and verify our own lists, there’s no if, ands or buts.”
Asked if Conservative headquarters objects to his campaign’s insertion of voter information into the list generated by the national campaign, Mr. Kramp replied: “’I’ve never had a problem, we have access to it, I use it, I supplement it, and simply, it’s a phenomenal asset, there’s no doubt about it.”
Asked whether his campaign would simply add its own information to the headquarters file through its own computers, he said: “We have access of the two systems, I don’t even know, but there’s a certain amount of access that probably would be limited, like I don’t imagine we could access their, the entire system, we just access for input.”
Conservative MP Joe Preston (Elgin-Middlesex-London, Ont.), the chair of the Commons standing committee that is in charge of election issues and which received the report on the 2011 election from Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand last year, said he did not know which voter-contact firm his campaign used to collect voter identification information.
“Couldn’t tell you, I used somebody, but I don’t know who,” he said.
Mr. Preston's campaign expense return submitted to Elections Canada indicates his campaign spent no money on elections surveys or other polls and surveys.
Mr. Preston said he was also uncertain whether the Conservative Party was in charge of the electoral district voter identification information and voter lists his campaign would have used: “I’m sure that was done locally, but I don’t know that for sure either.”
Conservative MP Ed Holder (London West, Ont.) told The Hill Times he did not know which data-collection firm his campaign used to identify voters.
“I know that we did have some occasions to use a service to help us with some of the calls we made to get out advance votes and the like, but to be frank with you, one thing they do, because I’m the perfect candidate in the sense that I let my campaign team do that, and so I truly don’t know,” he said.
Mr. Holder’s election expense return at Elections Canada lists a payment of $14,752.15 to Responsive Marketing Group for election surveys and other surveys or polls, and another payment of $248.85 to the firm for a total of $15,000. RMG, along with the Conservative-connected firm of Campaign Research, did virtually all of the voter-contact and identifying telephone calls for Conservative candidates.
One of the Conservative MPs whose electoral district is under the Elections Canada microscope, northern Ontario MP Jay Aspin (Nipissing-Timiskaming, Ont.) could not say with certainty whether the central Conservative Party provided his campaign with its voter identification information and voter lists and telephone numbers.
He said his campaign has “our own lists” but when asked if the Conservative Party provided voter ID information and phone numbers from its database, Mr. Aspin replied: “Not to my knowledge. We just handled it like every other campaign.”
Mr. Aspin, whose campaign paid the Calgary firm Alberta Blue Strategies $5,221 for voter contact service, expressed frustration with the controversy.
“What we did is like everybody else and the Conservative Party did, we called our own supporters to get out the vote, and we had a town hall, which was a very successful town hall and that’s what we used those people for, so we’re a clean and ethical campaign and all this stuff quite frankly has been blown out of proportion by the media and aided and abetted by the other parties,” said Mr. Aspin, who defeated Liberal candidate Anthnony Rota by only 18 votes.
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Tim Naumetz
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