In about a week, we will either have the solution to the biggest unsolved crime in Canadian electoral history, or something far less satisfying. Here are 10 questions that need to be answered about what has come to be known as the Robocalls Affair.
EC investigator Al Mathews did a superb job of following the electronic tracks of Robocalls to the doors of the Conservative Party of Canada. Mathews learned that the list used by telephone fraudsters in the 2011 election matched a list from the Constituents Information Management System – (CIMS).
That connection is critical. Access to this most valuable tool of voter identification and outreach is closely guarded by the Party. Yet someone with administrative access managed to enter the system surreptitiously with a targeted request and download a list of “non-supporters” in Guelph.
Question One: After Mr. X breached the security of CIMS, and went on to use the information to illegally discourage people from voting, did Chris Rougier, who oversaw National Voter Contact Operations in the 2011 election, or anyone else in HQ, ever call the RCMP to investigate the theft of the Party’s information?
The list downloaded from CIMS was later uploaded to RackNine by “Pierre Jones”, along with a voice recording of polling station changes, and a schedule for placing the calls on the morning of May 2, 2011. RackNine gives its clients the option of a test call.
That test call went out on Election Day to the burner cellphone registered to “Pierre Poutine” at around 10: AM. In the next ten minutes, nearly 7,000 Guelph residents identified as “not supporting” Conservative candidate Marty Burke received the phoney message that their polling stations had been moved.
Question Two: After tracing the phoney calls to a CPC list that was updated on April 27, 2011 in their computer, why didn’t Elections Canada investigators serve a court order for records stored on CIMS?
That is exactly what the election watchdog did with Matt Meier of RackNine in November 2011 to obtain evidence from his computer system. It is also what EC did in the In-and-Out scandal and why investigators were able to prove their case that election laws had been broken.
Although charges were dropped in a plea bargain against four senior party officials, including the late Doug Findley and the very much alive Irving Gerstein, the CPC paid a fine of $52,000. It also had to return another $230,000 after it was proven that the party exceeded advertising spending limits in the 2006 election by a million dollars. In a close election, the extra advertising, coming late in the campaign, mattered. It might even have won the election.
A lot of people have forgotten that the CPC knew about phoney robocalls being attributed to them three days before the infamous Pierre Poutine got the test call from RackNine on Election Day, kicking off the electronic voter suppression in Guelph.
Conservative Party lawyer, Arthur Hamilton was contacted by EC’s lawyer on April 29th, 2011 and advised of what was happening. Citizens were getting calls with false information about poll locations. Their caller IDs told them those calls were coming from the Conservative Party.
Twenty-seven hours later, Hamilton replied to say that the CPC were merely calling their own voters to make sure they went to the right polls.
Again on Election Day, EC contacted Hamilton because the robocalls scam was getting worse. Complaints were coming in from angry voters across the country. Hamilton insisted that if there were dirty tricks going on out there, they weren’t being perpetrated by the CPC
Question Three: Has EC asked Arthur Hamilton for phone records or emails to show what investigations he undertook to arrive at the conclusion the CPC wasn’t involved in fraudulent calls?
The Conservative Party of Canada has insisted from the beginning that it deplores voter suppression, didn’t resort to it in the 2011 election, and has cooperated from the beginning with the Elections Canada investigation.
Question Four: If the CPC was cooperating with the investigation, why did it take nearly three months for Arthur Hamilton to arrange an interview with Guelph campaign worker Andrew Prescott for lead investigator Al Mathews, and why did national campaign director Jenni Byrne advise Prescott not to talk to Mathews before she talked to a lawyer?
The record shows that Chris Rougier, who oversaw the voter contact operations in the 2011 election, placed a call from HQ to Matt Meir at RackNine on May 1, 2011. It is the only call that the CPC has not clearly explained.
Question Five: What was the purpose of Rougier’s call to Matt Meier the day before the election?
One of the oddities of the burner phone used by “Pierre Poutine” is that it only ever called two phone-numbers – both of them belonging to RackNine. But there were six text messages from California and one live call from New York State lasting 21 seconds that were received by “Poutine’s” burner phone.
Question Six: Who sent those texts and made that one live call?
In addition to buying a burner cellphone, and setting up an account at RackNine, the culprit created an email address for himself – pierres1430@gmail.com When EC investigators tried to get account information for that address, Google claimed that it was an American company that operated under American law and did not have to comply with the court order.
Question Seven: Given the Harper government’s claim that it will do all it can to assist EC’s investigation, will the Harper government support Ontario’s Attorney-General to deny Google an exemption from Canadian law?
The only person charged in Robocalls so far is Michael Sona. A week after he was outed by Sun Media, Peter MacKay became the first Harper cabinet minister to publicly point the finger at Sona.
Question Eight: Since at that time, Sona was neither charged nor convicted, will Peter MacKay who is now justice minister recuse himself from anything to do with a matter he has prejudged?
It seems astounding that EC investigators permitted Arthur Hamilton to look for evidence on their behalf, produce key witnesses against Michael Sona, and actually sit in on the interviews conducted by Al Mathews. There have been reports claiming that Hamilton seemed to be coaching witnesses.
Question Nine: Would Al Mathews in his former life as an RCMP inspector have permitted someone representing a party to the investigation sit in on witness interviews, particularly since he was not their lawyer but the CPC’s?
And finally there is this. Elections Canada has received more than 31,000 complaints of misleading calls during the election from across the country, an unprecedented number according Jean-Pierre Kingsley, who served 17 years as Canada’s chief electoral officer.
Question Ten: If Robocalls was just a rogue operator in Guelph, will Elections Canada be giving Canadians an explanation of the tsunami of misleading phone-calls elsewhere?
Just don’t tell us it was all Michael Sona all the time.
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