It’s been eight weeks since the news first broke that call centres affiliated with the Conservative Party of Canada allegedly placed thousands of illegal phone calls to stop non-Conservative voters from reaching the polls in the 2011 federal election.
The crisis has shaken Canadians’ confidence in the fundamental core of our democracy - free and fair elections. Together, you set the agenda from the start. The NDP, Liberals and Greens have all called for some form of public inquiry, and Canadians overwhelmingly support the idea.2 Harper’s Conservatives are alone in resisting this public scrutiny.
Now, we want to update you, and ask for your input as we work together to protect the basic integrity of our democracy.
Elections Canada is investigating, but the investigation is not public and their powers are limited - significantly, even if they find evidence of organized fraud, they cannot overturn the results and order a new election. Under current Canadian law there are only two ways to overturn a compromised result and order a new election: a voter or candidate can launch a court challenge of the result in their riding, or the Governor General can dissolve the current Parliament, and order a completely new election. With your help, legal challenges are now underway in seven of the affected ridings.
Over the last few weeks, we have seen growing evidence of systematic electoral fraud. New evidence clearly links illegal calls to the Conservative Party of Canada’s voter-tracking database, and shows that thousands of non-Conservative voters were targeted in different ridings. For more details we’ve included a full update below.
As the evidence casts even more doubt on the legitimacy of the last election, we face a deepening democratic crisis. This democratic crisis becomes more urgent each day as the government rolls out its sweeping plans to remake Canadian society.
To begin to restore the basic integrity of our democracy, Canadians need to answer two questions:
- Is the party in power responsible for, or complicit in, systematic election fraud?
- If so, then what should be done to restore the basic integrity of our elections?
As we plan our next steps to help Canada find a resolution to this democratic crisis, we want to know what you think should be done.
If there is clear evidence that the party in power is responsible for, or complicit in, systematic election fraud, what should be done?
We’ll use your answer to help design the next chapter in this campaign.
With hope and respect,
Jamie, Matthew, Julia, Emma, Ryan and Adam on behalf of the Leadnow.ca team
The Election Fraud Crisis - the story so far...
Last May, thousands of voters received illegal robocalls and live calls pretending to be from Elections Canada, telling them their polling station had moved. Reports came out at the time, but nobody knew the scale of what happened. In mid-February 2012 the scandal exploded after a freedom of information act request revealed that Elections Canada had traced the calls to a company working for the Conservative Party of Canada. We launched our campaign,1 and over 44,000 Canadians joined you to call for a full public inquiry.
Elections Canada is investigating, but the investigation is not public and their powers are limited - significantly, even if they find evidence of organized fraud, they cannot overturn the results and order a new election. Under current Canadian law there are only two ways to overturn a compromised result and order a new election: a voter or candidate can launch a court challenge of the result in their riding, or the Governor General can dissolve the current Parliament, and order a completely new election.
With your help, we reached out across Canada to find voters who’d received fraudulent calls. Hundreds stepped forward, providing the evidence that has allowed us to work with the Council of Canadians and launch legal challenges to election results in seven of the closest ridings where there are serious allegations of widespread fraud.4,10 We also passed on all the reports to Elections Canada to aid their investigation.
Thousands of Canadians have taken to the streets in two days of action, organized by volunteers across the country. We helped promote the rallies and invited many of you to take part, and your call for a public inquiry was the main rallying cry of the protests across Canada.
The evidence of a systematic effort to suppress non-Conservative voters continues to grow. We’ve learned a lot in the last two weeks, and there is now strong evidence that the lists of voters targeted by illegal calls came directly from the Conservative Party of Canada’s voter-tracking database, called CIMS.
- Annette Desgagne, who worked at a Northern Ontario call center that placed calls for the Conservatives in the 2011 election, has stated in a sworn affidavit that she was instructed to call voters with a script that gave them false information that their polling station had changed. She spent three days making those calls, and the Conservative won the riding by only 18 votes. Call centre operatives received phone numbers to call from CIMS, and logged the results of their calls to CIMS.5
- Elections Canada compared phone records from RackNine, one of the companies whose systems were used to make illegal phone calls, to the Conservative Party of Canada’s CIMS database that tracks voters. They found a perfect match between the Guelph phone records, and the Conservatives’ list of non-supporters.6
- A major new cross-country poll just found that Canadians who had already told campaign callers that they were not going to vote Conservative were almost twice as likely to receive a call falsely telling them their polling station had changed. 10 to 15 per cent of voters or about 30,000 to 50,000 people received deliberately misleading calls aimed at suppressing non-Conservative votes in the seven key ridings where legal challenges are underway.8,9
- Expert witness Bob Penner, president and CEO of Strategic Communications Inc, stated in a sworn affidavit that "The only plausible explanation for such calling to have occurred is for someone at the senior level in a central political campaign to have authorized the strategy and provided the data and the funds".7
Sources
- Leadnow.ca campaign for an independent inquiry:
http://www.leadnow.ca/robocall-fraud - Canadians seek public inquiry into robocall allegations: poll
http://www.globaltvbc.com/canadians+seek+public+inquiry+into+robocall+
allegations+poll/6442598594/story.html - Robocalls: Conservative Party’s firm directed voters in Northern Ontario to wrong polling stations, says former employee
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1163758--robocalls-conservative-party-s-firm-directed-voters-in-northern-ontario-to-wrong-polling-stations-says-former-employee - Robocalls: Activist group files legal challenge of results in seven ridings
http://www.canada.com/news/Robocalls+Activist+group+files+legal+challenge+
results+seven+ridings/6362995/story.html - Former phone-bank worker files sworn affidavit over election calls
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada/former-phone-bank-worker-files-sworn-affidavit-over-election-calls-147981835.html - Robocalls probe extends to Tory headquarters
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Robocalls%2Bprobe%2Bextends%2B
Tory%2Bheadquarters/6468552/story.html - Tories dismiss robocalls accusation
http://www.canada.com/news/Tories+dismiss+robocalls+accusation/
6493672/story.html - Robocalls: Up to 50,000 voters received deceptive calls: pollster
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1167117--robocalls-up-to-50-000-voters-received-deceptive-calls-pollster - Fraudulent election calls 'widespread' in 7 ridings, poll suggests
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/story/2012/04/24/pol-election-calls-poll.html - For more on the Council of Canadians' legal challenges see:
http://canadians.org/election