There are new allegations of “voter
augmentation” in the last election, this time in Scarborough-Rough River, where thousands of Tamil voters registered on-site on election day. And to top it off,
Elections Canada said that they’re not going to investigate, despite the fact
that there is demonstrated evidence that many of the addresses these on-site
registrants provided were false. This is not the first time we’ve seen such
allegations and dropped investigations. In 2006 the allegations were coming from Trinity-Spadina, where there were between some 10,000 and 12,000 on-site
registrations, and plenty of anecdotal evidence of people showing up with
and claiming the right to vote. An American student proved in that election how
easy it was to do in that very riding. It does seem to be something that
Elections Canada should be taking more seriously. Despite their attempts to get
more people to vote, we should be worried that this is something that people may
be abusing.
A fake Michael Sona appeared on YouTube
yesterday to claim responsibility and claim there was worse to come – err,
except that it didn’t make any sense. How can there be “worse robo-calls to
come” if this is about an investigation into past practices that have all been
reported? And nobody with any political acumen would really threaten to expose
their former boss while looking for a new job. You’d think that if you were
going to go through the trouble of faking a confession video that you’d at
least be logically consistent, no? Sona, for the record, was apparently shocked to be named as the source of the calls before he stepped down. Meanwhile, in
the event you weren’t sure, Dean Del Mastro isn’t so squeaky clean when it comes
to improperly identified robo-calls and conducting misleading push-polls in his
own riding. And the Liberals have turned overtheir phone records and sample
scripts to Elections Canada proactively.
The government talking points moved further
away from a blanket commitment to purchasing F-35s at a committee hearing
today, and now sounds like there is room to reconsider that purchase with
another replacement for the CF-18s.
The government members of the Environment
Committee want the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act “modernized” for a
one-step process for environmental assessments of big projects. The opposition,
obviously, is not having any of it.
Ooh, Leona Aglukkaq has written a sternly
worded letter to Sandoz Canada over the drug shortage.
And Conservative MP Stephen Woodworth’s private
members’ motion to essentially re-open the abortion debate will happen sometime
in April.
