Bill C-23 - Stealing Democracy Part IX: The Shackles On Elections Canada Advertising

Ever since Bill C-23 was tabled, I have been baffled by the fact that the bill so viciously curtails the ability of Elections Canada to advertise and communicate with voters in S18:

18(1) The Chief Electoral Officer may provide the public, both inside and outside Canada, with information on the following topics only: 

(a) how to become a candidate;
(b) how an elector may have their name added to a list of electors and may have corrections made to information respecting 35  the elector on the list;

(c) how an elector may vote under section 127 and the times, dates and locations for voting;

(d) how an elector may establish their identity and residence in order to vote, including the pieces of identification that they may use to that end; and
(e) the measures for assisting electors with a 5  disability to access a polling station or advance polling station or to mark a ballot.(2) The Chief Electoral Officer shall ensure that any information provided under subsection (1) is is accessible to electors with disabilities.
(3)  The Chief Electoral Officer shall not provide information under this section by the use of calls as defined in section 348.01, that are unsolicited.

The obvious intent is to hamstring Elections Canada, especially in terms of tackling broad based issues like trying to get the voter turnout improved on election day.  But why?  What on earth is bad about encouraging people to vote?

Well, we know that in part, the Conservatives have no love for anyone who doesn't vote their way - as evidenced by the Robocalls scandal, where a bunch of calls were made to divert voters who weren't likely to vote Conservative away from the correct polling stations.  So voter suppression is part of the discussion.  But it doesn't fully explain things for me.

In today's Hill Times, we get a little more insight into what the government's motives are:

The 2008 video that did not run begins with a sketched portrayal of a ballot being cast, then a moving sketch portrayal of a lively rock concert crowd and electronic music, as the images change to include a recycle symbol, with a backdrop of freeways, industry chimney emitters, and then a quiet forest. The brief clip ends with the printed words 'Vote. Shape your world.' 

The ad and two other Elections Canada videos uploaded to YouTube in October 2008, also were cancelled and not aired, said John Enright, communications director at Elections Canada. 

“This advertising campaign was developed for the 2008 federal general election,” Mr. Enright said in an email. “However, the campaign was cancelled by Mr. Mayrand when he became Chief Electoral Officer. The ads were never aired by  Elections Canada.”

This tells us a lot - it basically boils down to the fact that Elections Canada started to create an advertising campaign to encourage younger voters to participate, and did so by playing on issues that the Conservatives don't like - the environment and climate change at the top of the list.

In short, the CPC doesn't like the fact that the Elections Canada ad would have encouraged voters who are more likely to vote against the party dogma.

Just as the Conservative government has been strangling Environment Canada gradually since 2006, and science in general in this country, they will be mightily offended by any department of the government who doesn't toe the party line on a particular subject - regardless of the evidence.

Like the rest of the very dubious provisions in this legislation, it comes down to the Conservatives working very hard to dismantle the very apparatus that ensures that elections in Canada are in fact free, open and fair.  It makes voting against the CPC not merely a vote against them, but rather makes it an act of subversion.

Bill C-23: Part VI: The Theft Of Democracy - Muzzling The Chief Electoral Officer

Wading through C-23 is feeling more and more like trying to pick one's way through a minefield.  Every step, you half expect to find something that is going to go "click" ... followed by a very loud bang.

Today, I bring you what the Conservatives are doing to the ability of Elections Canada to evaluate what is happening in our elections and take steps to make things work better.  (Hint:  It isn't good for Canada)

At present, Section 18 of the Canada Elections Act reads as follows:

18. (1) The Chief Electoral Officer may im- plement public education and information pro- grams to make the electoral process better known to the public, particularly to those per- sons and groups most likely to experience diffi- culties in exercising their democratic rights. 

(2) The Chief Electoral Officer may, using any media or other means that he or she consid- ers appropriate, provide the public, both inside and outside Canada, with information relating to Canada’s electoral process, the democratic right to vote and how to be a candidate. 

(3) The Chief Electoral Officer may estab- lish programs to disseminate information out- side Canada concerning how to vote under Part 11. 

18.1 The Chief Electoral Officer may carry out studies on voting, including studies respect- ing alternative voting means, and may devise and test an electronic voting process for future use in a general election or a by-election. Such a process may not be used for an official vote without the prior approval of the committees of the Senate and of the House of Commons that normally consider electoral matters.

The amendments to S18 in C-23 read as follows:

Del Mastro Charged ... and ... Your Point Is?

All over the news yesterday was headlines about Dean Del Mastro being charged by Elections Canada for misdeeds in the 2008 election.

You'd think I'd be cheering.  I'm not.

Yes, I'm glad that Del Mastro will, at last, have to answer for questionable campaign practices in the 2008 election.

But, it was the fraudulent practices of the Conservatives during the 2006 and 2008 elections that led to the much more widespread fraud that they carried out in the 2011 election - and that election is the one where the greatest damage has been done to Canada.

The fact that it has taken Elections Canada 5 years to bring Del Mastro before a court is a statement about how effectively the Harper Government has stymied the ability of Canada's electoral oversight body to hold politicians accountable since coming to power in 2006.

In 2006, the Conservatives engaged in a lovely little money laundering operation to get away with violating campaign spending rules.  It's gone downhill from there.

In 2011, we were visited with the most blatant abuses of the electoral system in the form of Robocalls misdirecting voters away from correct polling stations - with data from the Conservatives voter information database.  To date, only one charge has been laid in this case, and mysteriously the access logs for the CPC database have been "accidentally destroyed".

How convenient.

Quite frankly, we are seeing a consistent pattern of outright corruption and abuse from the Harper Government.  They essentially lied and cheated through the 2011 election, and in doing so have called into question the legitimacy of our very system of selecting a government.  Since then, they have moved quite deliberately to hamstring Elections Canada's ability to investigate and prosecute these crimes effectively by strangling their budget resources.

Yes, Del Mastro needs to be prosecuted.  So do a lot of other people in the CPC - starting at the top.  It disappoints me that it has taken 5 years to bring Del Mastro before a court, and it angers me that Harper will have gotten away with even more by the time 2015/16 elections rolls around while a hobbled oversight system struggles to bring all of these misdeeds to justice.

Conservatives and Electoral Reform

Ever since 2006, the Conservatives have been squabbling with Elections Canada.  What precisely the problem the HarperCons have is something of a mystery to me.  Regardless, they seem to have ongoing and serious problems with the government agency that is responsible for overseeing elections in this country.

So, after seeing Del Mastro's crocodile tears over his 2008 campaign spending issues yesterday, I decided to do a little bit of historical analysis to see what that turns up.

Somewhat unsurprisingly, there is quite a list of issues with the Conservative campaigns starting in 2006.

In 2006, the big, smelly, issue was the "In-and-Out" scandal where the Conservatives essentially engaged in a money laundering scheme to hide advertising spending.  For the most part, Harper managed to shrug this bit of crooked chicanery off.  (apparently, electoral fraud didn't register on voters in 2008)  However, it should be noted that the issue is still before the courts.

The 2008 election was triggered by Harper, no doubt with the idea that he could garner a majority on the heels of a "successful" minority that had been in place since 2006.  Harper claimed that he called the election because parliament was deadlocked - of course he conveniently ignored the fact that it was deadlocked by the very tactics that he instituted.

To be honest, I'm actually a little surprised that issues from the 2008 election are still being wrangled over - in particular Del Mastro's campaign spending.  However, if Del Mastro paid for campaign activities out of his own pocket and tried to subvert the accountability side of the elections process in doing so, that would be very much in character.

Additionally, there was a very suspicious set of events in Toronto where a number of Liberal supporters found the brake lines on their cars cut.  While this was not specifically investigated by Elections Canada, it is a rather overt form of harassment of voters which I have often thought was a clumsy attempt at voter suppression.

Then in 2011, we have seen a plethora of MPs whose election spending reports have been questioned by Elections Canada.  Interestingly, it always seems to be Conservative MPs who are getting caught out overspending or violating other rules.  I actually would have expected a bunch of these types of reports to be surfacing regarding NDP MPs from Quebec - not out of a sense of corruption, but more out of inexperience.

Moving beyond that, we have the infamous Robocalls scandal, which remains an ongoing point of contention which I believe calls into question the validity of the government as it stands today.

The real issue, when you distill it down, is that the Conservatives have a culture of "The Rules Don't Apply To Us", and they keep getting called out on it.  It wouldn't be so bad if it was relatively minor overspending infractions, but when you combine it with voter suppression, it becomes an evil that must be excised from our political system.