Investigator Allan Mathews said in an affidavit sworn last week that the media attention surrounding his probe of robocalls in Guelph has had a “chilling effect” and discouraged some witnesses from speaking with him.
In one case, Mathews alleged, a witness had been harassed in messages over Facebook by an acquaintance of Michael Sona, the former director of communication on the Conservative campaign in Guelph and the only person charged in the case.
Mathews swore the affidavit in response to the Citizen’s motion to lift a publication ban on a previous document he filed in court laying out evidence against Sona.
Crown prosecutor James Clark has filed a factum warning against publishing the names, and warning that Sona can be expected to attack the reputation of the witnesses.
“Michael Sona has also begun to make negative comments on social media regarding the yet unnamed witnesses, stating that they have ‘credibility problems,’ and implying that they have lied and misled investigators in order secure promotions,” he writes.
Sona was charged in April for preventing or trying to prevent an elector from casting a ballot over the automated phone calls that went out on the May 2, 2011 election day.
In a previous court filing, called an Information to Obtain a production order, or “ITO,” Mathews described interviews he conducted with Conservative political staff who worked on Parliament HIll and had discussions with Sona in the weeks and months after the election.
The details of the interviews are subject to a temporary publication ban and cannot be reported.
“These witnesses received accounts of what transpired at Guelph from the accused in this matter,” Mathews says in the affidavit. “
By coming forward, these individuals have identified themselves in the context of an investigation that has attracted significant and ongoing media attention.”
Although both Sona’s defence team and Crown prosecutors initially wanted the ban kept in place, Sona’s lawyer, Norman Boxall, contacted Citizen lawyer Richard Dearden on Monday evening and said his client will not oppose lifting the ban.
The Crown, however, continues to maintain that the names of the witnesses should still be covered by the ban. The Citizen, in cooperation with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Global News, will challenge the ban in court on November 13.
Dearden is planning to cross-examine Mathews at the hearing.
The Crown argues that revealing the names of the witnesses will “add nothing” to the narrative but will “increase witness reluctance to participate in this case and similar cases going forward, and will inevitably lead to persistent harassment of these witnesses.”
In his affidavit supporting the Crown’s position, Mathews alleged that two witnesses “expressed concerns that having any publicized involvement with the ‘robocalls’ could risk their employment.”
One witness who waited months to come forward with information about Sona allegedly told Mathews, “you let your fear run with you and then that would be embarrassing for the Minister. I would say that was also a huge primary fear of mine,” according to the affidavit sworn last week.
This witness also quoted a conversation with another witness, saying one would “probably have a hard time finding a job after, you know, because nobody likes the media attention.”
Mathews said the fear of media attention also hampered his attempts to interview 11 campaign workers from Conservative candidate Marty Burke’s campaign in Guelph — the origin, Mathews believes, of the misleading calls sending voters to the wrong polling location.
“One, who was directly involved with database access and use, a very relevant issue for the investigation, flatly refused to cooperate with my investigation because of a fear that his name would appear in the media,” Mathews wrote.
“Several other persons indicated a concern with their names appearing in, or being contacted by, the media.”
“Two declined to cooperate without providing me any reason,” he wrote, apparently a reference to Burke’s campaign manager, Ken Morgan, and volunteer Trent Blanchette, who have both declined to be interviewed, according to previously-released court documents.
Mathews writes that an acquaintance of Sona sent a Facebook message to one of the witnesses, attacking him as the “worst kind” of person.
“You’re the kind who would swear on the Bible to tell the truth and then lie on the witness stand,” Sona’s acquaintance wrote, calling the witness “both a liar and coward.”
Mathews writes that Sona’s friend “became aware of the involvement of witness #5 through disclosure of the Crown material to the accused,” rather than from the publication of court documents, but warns this is the kind of thing that can happen “in highly partisan circumstances should any of the witness identities be published.”
Mathews also claims in the document that, after the Citizen and Postmedia first reported on the Guelph investigation in February 2012, he was contacted by a number of witnesses he already interviewed who asked him if they were required to talk to journalists.
With agreement of both the defence and Crown, Judge Celynne Dorval last month agreed to the Citizen’s request to vary the publication to allow reporting of some information in the ITO, including the fact that Conservative Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton was present when Mathews interviewed the witnesses.
Hamilton has declined to comment on what role he played in the interviews.
Both Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand and Commissioner of Canada Elections Yves Coté have said that the inability of investigators to subpoena witnesses and compel testimony has impeded the robocalls investigation.
Mayrand has called on the government to extend these powers to the agency’s investigators in the long-overdue rewrite of the Elections Act that the government promised last year but has yet to deliver.
Democratic Reform Minister Pierre Poilievre told the Citizen this month that the government would bring in a new law in time for the 2015 election but refused to say what it might include.
Original Article
Source: ottawacitizen.com
Author: GLEN MCGREGOR AND STEPHEN MAHER
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