Tag: electionscanada

McGregor and Maher published another installment in their series covering the robocalls controversy a couple of days ago. They led with the news that Allan Mathews, the former RCMP investigator who has been working as an investigator for Elections Canada, has been asked to submit an affidavit in the case of the applicants who are seeking to overturn the election results in six ridings. If he complies, he may end up on the stand for cross-examination. But this, several paragraphs into the story, is just as interesting if not more so. Earlier this month, a few days after the Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia News reported on email records that showed Elections Canada officials suspected the Conservatives of "mischief" with misleading telephone calls during the last election, Shrybman wrote to the agency to complain that it had failed to provide the emails when he requested records of complaints in August. This week, Elections Canada agreed to introduce records containing the emails… The Conservatives have maintained all along that this challenge is being brought by sore losers who didn’t like the election results. That line of attack is blunted by the fact that the emails in question reflect complaints that Elections Canada…

Democracy Watch has a published a new media release. Here’s the first three paragraphs: OTTAWA – Today, Democracy Watch called on the federal Conservatives to introduce the bill to ban false election robocalls and strengthen election law enforcement that they promised to introduce by the end of September under a resolution passed unanimously last March by federal politicians. Democracy Watch’s national letter-writing and petition drive has resulted in more than 56,000 messages being sent to politicians across Canada calling on them to pass effective laws to stop election fraud robocalls, and to strengthen enforcement of election laws. To their credit, the federal Liberals introduced private member Bill C-424 last May to increase fines for false robocalls and other fraudulent attempts to sway voters from $2,000-$5,000 up to $20,000 to $50,000. The Conservatives rejected Bill C-424 on Wednesday (Nov. 21). 56,000 messages actually doesn’t seem like all that much. Surely there are more Canadians than that who want to see the health of our democracy protected. The Conservatives have made it pretty obvious that they’ll stall on this as long as possible; they don’t seem likely to act without a lot more pressure. If you agree, perhaps you’d like to send…

In his report on the election tabled in August 2011, [Chief Electoral Officer Marc] Mayrand made brief mention of the "crank calls" that incorrectly advised voters of changed polling locations but there was no indication that these were a widespread or coordinated effort. Mayrand said only the Commissioner of Canada Elections was investigating. That’s taken from an article by Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher that was published last Friday. It reports on email communications involving Elections Canada officials and Conservative Party representatives in the last few days of the 2011 federal election campaign. That article has certainly stirred things up again. It’s now quite clear that even before the polls had closed on May 2nd of last year — fully 18 months ago — some at EC were already suspicious that there had been an organized effort to mislead voters. That’s a lot more serious than "crank calls" and their suspicions were directed at the Conservative Party of Canada. And now every line of investigation that came up empty because investigators were too slow to get there takes on new significance….

I confess to being a bit mystified. When the Supreme Court of Canada interrupted its normal summer hiatus to hear the appeal concerning the riding of Etobicoke-Centre, it appeared to indicate the intention to treat the matter with a certain amount of urgency. Three months later, we’re still waiting for

I wonder if it ever occurs to Conservatives that when their luck changes and they find themselves on the outside looking in, they might be subject to a little payback. Or even a lot of payback. Their attacks on anyone who opposes them are so vicious and over-the-top that they

The Council of Canadians and the seven ridings Last Friday afternoon I ended up doing a quick update to the weekly post. To return to that for anyone who may have missed it… One of the key pieces of evidence in support of the applications to overturn the election results