“People admire and respect Dean because he’s tenacious and a fighter. Probably here, he’s being more of a boxer than he should be,” said Tim Powers, vice-president of Summa Strategies. “He may want to take a polished sort of lawyerly approach to all this.”
Mr. Del Mastro, Parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.), is under investigation by Elections Canada for allegedly breaching the Elections Act for exceeding his 2008 election spending limit when he wrote Holinshed Research Group a personal cheque for $21,000 for voter-identification calls, and is alleged to have tried to cover up the misspending by reimbursing donors through his cousin David Del Mastro’s electrical contracting company, Deltro. Mr. Del Mastro’s campaign return originally only showed $1,575 paid to Holinshed, but was later updated to include a $10,000 expense for Holinshed.
Under election spending laws, candidates can contribute a maximum of $2,100 to their campaigns.
News of the investigation broke on June 6 when The Ottawa Citizen’s Glen McGregor and Postmedia’s Stephen Maher—who have been following Elections Canada court filings since breaking the robocalls story—reported based on a sworn affidavit from Elections Canada investigator Thomas Ritchie that Mr. Del Mastro’s 2008 election campaign had allegedly filed a “false document.”
That “false document,” according to Mr. Ritchie’s affidavit in the information-to-obtain-a-production-order, is a memo filed by Mr. Del Mastro’s campaign that reportedly shows a partial, $10,000 refund to Mr. Del Mastro’s campaign from Holinshed. Company president Frank Hall has reportedly told Mr. Ritchie the note was not written by his company.
Mr. Del Mastro has maintained that he did not exceed his campaign spending limit and said the $21,000 quote for services was paid by mistake, was refunded, and the correct, $1,575 invoice was later paid and included in his campaign filings.
Mr. Del Mastro said the $21,000 was set to be paid in two installments: a $10,000 cheque, which was refunded, and an $11,000 cheque, which the campaign put a stop on.
“The campaign never incurred a $21,000 expenditure from Holinshed Research. Did not,” Mr. Del Mastro told CBC News on June 12. “As I’ve indicated, the campaign did hire Mr. Hall and his company and was invoiced $1,500 for a limited amount of work they did during the campaign. That is reflected in our campaign [records] and I was refunded for that.”
The allegations facing Mr. Del Mastro, which have not been proven in court and no charges been laid against the MP, could result in a fine of $5,000 or imprisonment for up to five years.
Richard McCarthy, Mr. Del Mastro’s official agent, is also being investigated for allegedly filing a false return. Mr. Ritchie’s investigation into Mr. Del Mastro’s 2008 campaign expenses began April 2011, according to the affidavit, and began after Mr. Hall filed a complaint. The robocalls scandal, for which Mr. Del Mastro has acted as the government’s lead spokesperson, broke in February 2012 and subsequently led to reports of voter suppression and miscounted ballots in various ridings across Canada, as well as two court challenges.
But Mr. Del Mastro’s response in the media to the allegations against him and the investigation by Elections Canada could be hurting more than helping him, according to Conservative observers.
On June 6, Mr. Del Mastro said he had no knowledge of the investigation, making it hard to defend himself and denied the allegations, and the next day told the House of Commons that he hadn’t been contacted by the agency.
Over the weekend of June 9, just after news of the allegations broke, Mr. Del Mastro told his hometown paper, The Peterborough Examiner, that he would be coming forward with documents that would clear his name—something that has not yet happened in public.
On June 13, Prime Minister Harper rose in the House of Commons to defend Mr. Del Mastro: “The Hon. Member for Peterborough has submitted all of his information to Elections Canada. In fact, that report was certified several years ago. The Member of Parliament not only won that election but has since won a subsequent election. He serves his constituents and this House honourably.”
Fred DeLorey, Conservative Party director of communications, said Elections Canada had not asked the party “anything about this” and hadn’t mentioned the existence of the memo in question.
“The campaign sent a cheque in error and the campaign was refunded that cheque,” said Mr. DeLorey in a statement on June 14.
Mr. Del Mastro’s lawyer, Jeffrey Ayotte, released a letter stating that Elections Canada had declined to meet with the MP unless he agreed to give a “cautioned statement,” the legal term for a statement that can be used in court.
On June 21, Mr. McGregor and Mr. Maher published a story, based on Mr. Ritchie’s sworn statement, that said Mr. Del Mastro’s financial agent, Daniel Rosborough, had notified Mr. Del Mastro of the investigation back in December 2011 when Elections Canada investigator Al Mathews, who is also leading Elections Canada’s investigation into the Guelph robocall issue, arrived in Peterborough.
Elections Canada asked Mr. Del Mastro to respond to the allegations on a “cautioned basis,” but Mr. Del Mastro rejected the invitation, saying he couldn’t clear his name through a cautioned statement.
On July 6, Mr. Del Mastro’s lawyer said the MP had been contacted by Elections Canada and would be giving a cautioned statement to Mr. Ritchie. The about-face was not explained and the meeting has not yet been scheduled, but it is expected to take place at the end of July.
“He’s [Mr. Del Mastro’s] been sort of inconsistent in his message, and that’s just going to lead to more questions, that’s just going to lead to more stories…it’s not a great communications strategy,” said Gerry Nicholls, a political communications consultant and former president of the National Citizens Coalition. “From the point of view of an MP, or anybody who’s under this kind of situation, you want the story to go away, you want to deprive it of oxygen.”
Mr. Nicholls said the best way for an MP to deal with this kind of story is to say “as little as possible, just enough to get your spin on the story out there,” to the media, and to give everyone the same answer.
“It may not be the most polished, political response in terms of a reaction, but I think it’s very raw, very human, befitting the frustration that Dean has with all that is going on,” said Mr. Powers.
The allegations against Mr. Del Mastro are just one of a number of points of intersection between Elections Canada and the Conservative Party at present. The agency is also currently investigation the robocalls scandal in the riding of Guelph, Ont.
Both Mr. Del Mastro and the Conservative Party have reacted in strong terms to the allegations and investigations being conducted by Elections Canada.
Mr. Del Mastro has called Elections Canada’s handling of their investigation into his 2008 campaign finances “very unfair,” and suggested the agency was leaking information to the media.
When Elections Canada asked the Procedure and House Affairs Committee for the power to compel parties to back up their financial statements with receipts and details earlier this year while the robocalls investigation was underway, the committee’s Conservative majority voted down the request.
Mr. Nicholls said the party’s reaction to Elections Canada is in part just “good politics,” but said there’s a lot of “bad feelings” between the agency and the party, dating back to Prime Minister Harper’s time at the helm of the National Citizens Coalition back in 2001.
“There’s a lot of bad feeling between Elections Canada and Stephen Harper, and I think it goes both ways…and also, it’s good politics…it’s a very effective fundraising tool because whenever you feel your side is under attack, your natural instinct is to kind of rally around them,” said Mr. Nicholls.
Diane Benson, a spokesperson for Elections Canada, declined to make any comment on the accusation that Elections Canada is biased against the Conservatives, but directed The Hill Times towards the agency’s mandate which states that “Elections Canada is an independent, non-partisan agency that reports directly to Parliament.”
But Conservative insiders see things differently.
“Elections Canada has become a player in the political system and it shouldn’t…I think Elections Canada went over the acceptable line a couple of weeks ago when they used the same language Dean Del Mastro did, ‘smears,’ that shows that they’ve gone too far. These are bureaucrats, they’re public servants,” said one senior Conservative source, who did not want to be identified, referring to a comment made by Canada’s Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand before a House of Commons committee.
Testifying as part of the committee’s study into allegations of wrongdoing in the May 2011 election, Mr. Mayrand fielded questions from members about Elections Canada’s robocalls investigation and complaints of voting irregularities.
“You indicated in your report that you find it troubling to hear sometimes sweeping and vague allegations of irregularities being made public many months after the election and not supported by specific facts. We find that troubling as well. We’ve referred to that as ‘the unsubstantiated smear campaign.’…Can you just confirm to the committee that you’re going to work to make sure that no leaks are occurring from Elections Canada?” Mr. Del Mastro, a member of the committee, asked Mr. Mayrand.
Said Mr. Mayrand in response: “There’s another case of vague allegation here.”
Meanwhile, the source said the Conservative Party likes to “play in the grey areas” of rules and has taken an “aggressive” line with Elections Canada.
“The Conservatives fight very hard politically and they fight very close to the line of what is and what isn’t acceptable.…They play within the rules, but at the limit of those rules, and therefore Elections Canada has been called upon to make a decision there where they normally would never have had to go,” said the senior Conservative source, who added that the so-called “in-and-out” scandal was an example of the Conservatives pushing the limits.
Last year, the Conservative agreed to disagree with Elections Canada and dropped its appeal to the Supreme Court over Elections Canada’s interpretation of the election spending law in connection with the “in-and-out” spending scandal. The party pled guilty in 2011 to overspending on advertising in the 2006 election and agreed to replay $230,198.
The Conservative source and some other observers have pointed to Elections Canada’s treatment of Liberal leadership candidates who are still in significant debt following their 2006 leadership campaigns, saying Elections Canada wouldn’t have been so “lenient” with the Conservatives.
But Mr. Powers said it’s just a reality that Elections Canada, “like any body, they have a reputation and interests and a desire to do things in a certain way.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Laura Ryckewaert
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