Harper's Gambit

With his numbers sinking in the most recent polls, Harper appears to be moving to bring out his rear guard actions to sustain his grip on power.

There are several pieces to this discussion:

(1)  Foreign Affairs

Between fomenting a shooting war with Russia in the Ukraine,  a stance on Israel that's about as nuanced as an angry rhinoceros, and taking explicit sides in the ongoing collapse of Iraq and Syria, anyone would think that Harper was trying to drag Canada into a war.

Make no mistake about it, that is one of the cards that Harper wants in his hands.  There are two primary reasons for this:

a.  He thinks he can use it as a weapon against Justin Trudeau.  Play the "tough war president" routine, and try to portray his opponents as "weak" and "ineffectual" on such matters.

b.  If Canada is engaged in a shooting war, he can try to invoke the little clause in the constitution that allows for the extension of Parliament beyond 5 years.  (This would be unprecedented, but I don't put it past PMSH to try if he thinks his grip on power is in danger)

(2)  Escalating Attacks On Trudeau

Harper's war on Trudeau is once again escalating, with Harper attempting to use the government's health agency as part of his propaganda campaign, and of course ratcheting up the rhetoric against Trudeau in their flyers (which taxpayers pay for).

This is hardly surprising, given that October 2015 is when Harper's "Fixed Election Dates" law says there should be an election held, and nothing that the PMO has thrown at Trudeau has stuck.  The boys in the short pants are no doubt starting to panic about the ongoing slump of CPC support in the polls.

Frankly, this one is almost secondary.  For all intents and purposes, Harper can keep going until sometime in 2016 under Canada's existing constitution.  Expect to see Elections Canada spend millions of dollars setting up polling stations for an election that hasn't been called in fall 2015.

(3)  Expanding Propaganda Campaign

The Harper Government has been nothing if not relentless in its use of government resources to spew propaganda.  From the billions spent on "Economic Action Plan" ads, to the more recent (and blatant) attempt to try and turn Health Canada communications into anti-pot propaganda,  and the hyping of military nationalism in the promotion of "celebrations" for 1812, Harper has used just about every trick in the book to try and twist and buffalo Canadians into looking at the world through the narrow little lens that he wants us to.

(4)  The "Fair Elections Act"

We still don't know just how far this one is going to go in changing the balance in the electoral system.  There are enormous parts of that bill which got railroaded through which seriously compromise the ability of Canadians to exercise their right to vote, and to enable further shenanigans next election that will make the Robocalls conviction of Michael Sona look like small potatoes.

I have no doubt that Harper will do everything he can to hang on to power.  If he thinks he can steal the next election, he will do that in preference to the other alternatives, but there is nothing stopping him from delaying the next election well into 2016, if not beyond that.  

CPC Lied To Elections Canada On RoboCalls?

The corruption that is the CPC's actions in the 2011 election continues to fester.

The most recent instalment comes to us via Stephen Maher's latest column.

In an email May 1, party lawyer Arthur Hamilton told Elections Canada that Conservative call centre workers were not advising voters that Elections Canada had changed the location of polling stations, and that the party had not advised voters to go to a polling station an hour and a half from their home. 

But a report released by Elections Canada last month includes a script that shows the party’s callers were telling voters that Elections Canada had changed the location of polling stations, and investigators found one voter who was directed to a polling station 740 kilometres away. 

The report from Elections Canada found that there was no evidence of a conspiracy to prevent Canadians from voting, but comparing the script included in the report to emails obtained under access-to-information legislation raises questions about whether the Conservatives have been honest about their use of political calls. 

Hamilton sent his email to Elections Canada as the agency was fielding complaints from voters who had been given bad information about their polling station by Conservative campaigns. 

Elections Canada lawyer Ageliki Apostolakos emailed Hamilton on the evening of April 29.“In the course of the last half-hour, Elections Canada has heard that two representatives of the Conservative campaign office are communicating with electors in two electoral districts to inform them that their polling station has changed to another location,” she wrote. 

Hamilton replied 27 hours later, just after midnight on May 1. He wrote that because Elections Canada changed some polling station locations “a number of our candidates have had to confirm the proper location of polling stations to a number of supporters during their respective get-out-the-vote efforts.” 

“The calls being made by our candidates request the voter to confirm his or her polling location. There is no indication by the caller that the location may have changed, or words to that effect. And no voter is being directed to a polling location one and a half hours away from the correct polling location.” 

But a script included in Elections Canada’s report shows that workers at Conservative call centres were told to deliver the following line: “Elections Canada has changed some voting locations at the last moment. To be sure could you tell me the address of where you’re voting?” 

Elections Canada had asked the Conservatives not to communicate with voters about the location of their polling stations.

So, just how much did the CPC withhold from Elections Canada investigators?  A lot.  Enough to call into question the conclusions in the recent Elections Canada report which concluded that there isn't enough evidence to lay charges.

Down in the comments is a bit more interesting information from Nadine Lumley:

Pierre Poilievre owned a robocall company called 3D Contact Inc and was dating Jenni Bryne who controlled CIMS database during last election. 

"When Poilievre was running for election in 2004, he stated that he was co-owner of a political research company called 3D Contact Inc. According to the company profile, these 'contacts' were Stephen Harper, Ted Morton and Stockwell Day. His partner was Jonathan Denis, who later became Minister of Housing in the Alberta government." 

Micheal Sona, Director of Communications, was roomates with Chris Crawford, the person responsible for managing CIMS Database/List at the time. 

"Rougier was key member of the target seat team, working directly under campaign manager Jenni Byrne" His phone used to call Rack9  

The Rob Ford Campaign, aka part 2 of Steve's Ford BBQ trifecta hat trick wishlist, also used 3D Contact. 

http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2013/07/18/poilievre-brings-robocalls-expertise-to-new-job/
http://www.anonpaste.me/anonpaste2/index.php?5316b0ceba304db3#YH2hGWBgyB8ylA9eZfYSfM7U1mnnvELkutPzE6LkxcQ=
https://www.ic.gc.ca/app/scr/cc/CorporationsCanada/fdrlCrpDtls.html?corpId=6072305

Proof absolute?  Not quite, but enough to continue to call into question the CPC's claims of being "clean", and more than enough for voters to seriously question the motives behind much of what is lurking in the bowels of the "Fair Elections Act".

Stealing Our Democracy: Linda Frum, Talking Points and the Dumbf

*Dumbf = dumbfuckery - a condition that appears to be unique to the creation of Harper Government talking points regarding Bill C-23.

On Huffington Post this morning, I read Michael Bolen's commentary on Bill C-23 which led me to Linda Frum's more verbose op-ed defending her TWITter position from earlier this week.

Ms. Frum is a shadow of her brother when it comes to writing political polemics, and the Op-Ed which the Globe and Mail had the poor judgement to publish demonstrates that in spades.

According to Ms. Frum, there's a conflict of interest in the mandated missions of Elections Canada.

Here’s the institutional conflict of interest to which I pointed: 

Elections Canada is a bureaucracy with two missions: to ensure the integrity of the voting process and also to promote voter turnout. Those two missions are contradictory. You want the biggest vote total? Accept every ballot. You want to eliminate voter fraud? Eliminating improper ballots may reduce vote totals. 

In attempting to achieve a balance between these two different missions, the evidence suggests that Elections Canada has favoured its turnout goals over preserving the integrity of the process.

Seriously?  Ms. Frum's "evidence" for this claim?

Elections expert Harry Neufeld – no supporter of the Harper government’s proposed reforms – nevertheless reported that “some 11.8 per cent of all registration activity on Election Day in May, 2011, showed serious errors, according to the national audit undertaken for this review. That … equals 114,693 voters potentially having the validity of their votes put in question.” How serious are those irregularities? We don’t know, because Elections Canada does not investigate. 

Oh ... right.  So, along come the Conservatives with a piece of legislation that responds to this issue by making it harder for so many more Canadians to vote.  Okay, the Neufeld report identifies a significant percent of election day voter registrations had errors in them.  Rather than order an in-depth investigation of the errors and addressing the causes, the Conservatives have written a law which is clearly designed to benefit their electoral goals over addressing the actual problem. 

If these "serious errors" are the result of clerical errors (incorrect transcriptions of addresses into the voter registry, misspelling names etc.), that doesn't speak to any kind of widespread voter fraud, but rather a series of issues with procedures and training.  

Consider the most problematic of all forms of voting: where the voter has no identification. In those cases, current law allows an acquaintance, friend or relative of the voter to “vouch for” that person’s right to vote. The voter in question may be a legitimate voter who genuinely lacks ID. The voter may be a visiting relative who isn’t entitled to vote in that district – or even to vote in Canada at all. Or the voter may be valid – but have already used their ID to vote once that day and is now lining up without ID to do it a second time.

This is classic Harper Government tactics - assert that something is happening, and then claim that it is an enormous problem.  Vouching has been part of our voting system for decades.  To the best of my knowledge, there is not a shred of evidence that there is any significant amount of voter fraud taking place using this mechanism, much less on a scale which has a chance of materially affecting the outcome of an election.

One of the key issues in Bill C-23 is that it is attempting to address "voter fraud", when there is precious little evidence of Voter fraud in Canada.  On the other hand, we have very clear evidence of electoral campaign fraud starting in 2006 (In-and-Out Scandal), and 2011 (Robocalls) perpetrated by the campaign machinery of the Conservatives Party.  These misdeeds are not addressed at all by C-23, and arguably clauses in C-23 are designed to further enable political parties to engage in this kind of electoral cheating.

Notable is that nobody in the CPC seems to be standing up and saying that C-23 is wrong.  Nary a peep from backbench MPs, or the party apparatus at the riding level.  Remember this next election - the Harper Government has not chosen to represent the interests of Canadians, but rather to entrench its own cynical political interests in law.

Con$ Only Want Cons To Vote

Bill C-23 is an appalling piece of legislation.  It is filled with more underhanded deceitfulness than any piece of legislation should ever contain.  If there ever was any doubt about the motivations of the Harper Government in tabling this piece of poison, I think Senator Linda Frum's comments on Twitter yesterday did that in:

Wait a second, the argument basically becomes "a fair election is one where the motivated voters win".  That is, of course, far from the truth.  In our democracy, it is a plurality of votes cast that wins. In the hyper-partisan world of The Harper Government, it is instinctive for the Con$ to argue that getting out the vote is necessarily a "partisan" activity.  If you aren't a Con$ supporter, they would really much rather that you stayed home.

Elections Canada encouraging _all_ voters to get out and vote works against the Con$ - they know full well that historically, the majority of Canadians will vote against them if they actually vote.  So, they claim that it is a "conflict of interest".  Elections Canada however, rightly recognizes that there is a threshold voter turnout below which the legitimacy of an election's outcome becomes questionable in the collective minds of Canadians.  I'm not sure what that line is, but I would imagine that if only 20% of the eligible voters turned out, that the 80% who did not vote might rightly argue that the government elected has no legitimate mandate to govern.  

A free and fair election is one not only where a government is elected, but that it is seen to be legitimately elected by a plurality of the eligible voters casting their ballots.

We all know that parties spend huge money on their GOTV efforts on voting day.  We also know that the Con$ in particular go out of their way to get out _their_ vote and if they can discourage non-supporters from voting (e.g. Robocall Scandal), they will do that too.

In an election, parties have a natural desire to ensure that their supporters vote.  However, party supporter lists do not include all voters, and _all_ voters have the right to vote and should be encouraged to do so.  

The fact that the Harper Government thieves are arguing that a non-partisan GOTV effort is a "conflict of interest" tells us that in their mind that their interests are purely to discourage those who are not partisan supporters from participating in our democracy.  This is NOT democratic.

Stealing Democracy Part X: How Far Does The Rot Go?

There is no doubt any more that Bill C-23 is deliberately designed to enable the CPC (or other political parties) to engage in the kind of electoral fraud that the CPC has attempted, and been caught out at repeatedly in the past.  Worse, it goes so far as to politicize the staffing of voting stations.  None of this can end well.

Consider the following list of malfeasance on the part of the CPC since 2006:

1. The "In and Out" Fundraising Scheme (Money Laundering Fraud) 2006
2. Dean del Mastro is facing charges relating to campaign spending in 2008
3. Peter Penashue forced to resign over campaign spending issues in 2011
4. Robocalls in 2011 (direct voter suppression)
5. Appointment of Mike Duffy to the Senate
6. Appointment of Pamela Wallin to the Senate
7. Appointment of Patrick Brazeau to the Senate
8. Bruce Carson - appointed to be an advisor to Stephen Harper in the PMO - facing criminal fraud charges.
9. Bill C-23 an act designed to undermine our elections system.
10. Bill C-24 which is designed to politicize immigration to an even greater degree, and can be used in conjunction with C-23 for voter suppression.
11. Massive government spending on propaganda campaigns at taxpayer expense.  (Economic Action Plan ads, Canada Job Grant ads, etc)

There's no doubt quite a bit more that has escaped my notice.  

In today's news, we have another addition to the list - Hubert Pichet, policy advisor to Conservative Senators, has been charged with fraud as a result of the RCMP investigation into the Senate.  

We have to ask ourselves how pervasive is the rot in Harper's government?  At the highest levels, appointees to very senior positions are being charged with fraud and other criminal activities.  This is a government that is unique in Canada's history.  Not only is it clearly corrupt, but it is passing laws designed to entrench its particular brand of corruption into our politics for the foreseeable future.

Robocalls Revived

With Michael Sona's trial expected later this year, the RoboCalls scandal has once again booted up, reminding Canadian voters of the corruption in the 2011 election.

The most recent thing to fall out of the back of that horse?  Apparently one of Sona's co-conspirators has just been granted immunity from prosecution in exchange for his testimony on what actually happened.

Prescott's name has come up in some of the court filings made by investigators from Elections Canada, although he has so far declined to be interviewed by them. 

Prescott, who was paid a $1,000 stipend for his work on the campaign, including IT services, was the main contact with RackNine, the company whose services were used to make the illicit calls. 

All political parties use robocalls, or automated calls, to reach voters. Robocalls are regulated but not illegal. The calls at the heart of the investigation in Guelph were illegal because Elections Canada believes they were meant to interfere with some voters' right to cast their ballots.

The extent of Mr. Prescott's involvement is but one part of the issues that this whole debacle raises.

First, this speaks volumes about the laws and the powers conferred on Elections Canada to enforce elections law and to ferret out electoral misconduct.  That Mr. Prescott has been able to "decline" to be interviewed by Elections Canada for this long is criminal.  Clearly Elections Canada lacks the teeth to carry out the investigations effectively.  There should be no "easy escape hatch" that enables someone to avoid being interviewed by investigators for years after an election that is suspect.

Second, it suggests that the notion of accountability in an election needs to be much different than it was.  Elections Canada should be able to seize any and all evidence related to an election campaign immediately - including e-mail records, financial records etc.  from campaigns the minute that there is a whiff of suspicion that there has been efforts to win the election by subverting the electoral process.

If you will, the Harper Government, and the CPC, have shown that they are willing to lie, cheat and steal to win an election.  Elections Canada needs to have the tools at its disposal to move to intervene in these matters without the parties being able to weasel around and hide facts, evidence and people involved.  

Seats where electoral fraud is alleged should be held as vacant until such times as the investigations are completed.  If that means the government is missing a few MPs for a while, too bad.  The price of running a crooked campaign should be high.  

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.

RoboCalls Scandal - It's Still Alive

For those who had lost track of the Robocalls fraud perpetrated by the Harper Conservatives during the 2011 election, it hasn't gone away.

Harper has done an enormous amount of work to bury this case.  Not only have they fought the allegations tooth and nail, they have hobbled the ability of Elections Canada to fully investigate the scope of the malfeasance by stripping the agency's budget.  Ultimately, a low level party operative is now facing charges related to one riding.

That court case has been slowly making its way through the courts, and because of a publication ban in place, the ability of the public to find out precisely what is going on is extremely limited.

However, the good folks at the Ottawa Citizen have been paying close attention:

An Elections Canada investigator alleges he had reason to believe that Michael Sona admitted he was involved in misleading robocalls in the 2011 federal election and also alleges that the former Conservative Party campaign worker had hinted he didn’t act alone. 

Sona is the only person charged over the “Pierre Poutine” calls sent out to more than 7,000 voters in Guelph, Ont., on election day. 

These new but unproven allegations against Sona are detailed in a sworn statement from Elections Canada investigator Allan Mathews, which came to light Monday only after a judge issued a publication ban restricting the reporting of some of the statement’s details.

I personally find it difficult to believe that Sona came up with, and executed, this scheme on his own.

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.

So Conservatives ... Is There A (Not-AnyMore) Secret PMO Fund or Not?

In the wake of CBC's revelation of a PMO-controlled party fund that Nigel Wright administered, Canada's CPC membership needs to start asking some tough questions of its party.

CBC News has learned that Stephen Harper’s former chief of staff, Nigel Wright, had control of a secret fund in the Prime Minister’s Office when he cut the now infamous $90,000 "personal cheque" to disgraced Senator Mike Duffy.

In exclusive interviews, sources familiar with the fund tell CBC the money in it comes from Conservative Party coffers, and at times has reached almost $1 million.

Like all political party funds, more than half of all the cash in the secret PMO stash ultimately comes from taxpayers' pockets. Individual donors to political parties receive generous tax credits. Parties also receive millions from taxpayers through a per-vote subsidy, which is being phased out by 2015.

The revelation itself isn't necessarily a big surprise.  One might imagine that there are funds put aside to support the Prime Minister and other senior politicians in their efforts to forward the party's objectives during non-election times.  The concern that I think a lot of people would legitimately have is that this is not openly visible to party members, much less Canadians at large.

But, I am going to go a step or two further here.  When the story first broke, the first reaction from the Conservatives was denial.  Then, when that line of defence failed to squelch the story, the Conservatives switched to a bizarre "well yes the fund exists, but it's not hidden" line of defence.

On the question of whether the fund could have been used in the Wright-Duffy deal, Delorey said: "No funds were used for that."

Similarly, there were no denials when CBC News sent an almost identical email to Harper's communications director, Andrew MacDougall.

"I'll have to refer you to the party," MacDougall responded.

Asked whether the special fund was in any way connected to the Duffy-Wright deal, MacDougall responded: "I can give you a clear, 'no.' The funds used were Mr. Wright's personal funds."

The party's denial two days after the exchange of emails makes a number of other claims not supported by fact.

For example: "The CBC claimed party funds are hidden from Elections Canada. This is false."

In fact, Elections Canada does not oversee any political party expenditures outside an election period.

I can only imagine the Byzantine structures through which the Conservatives have moved this money in order to bury the existence of this slush fund.  The denial through obfuscation approach that the party has taken makes it clear that this fund not only exists, but it is quite reasonable to suspect that it is being used for questionable purposes.  An inconsistent story from the party with respect to this - even though CBC's journalists have published the correspondence with Party Officials on this matter - speaks to a party culture where the first response to something dishonest being discovered is to cover it up with a lie.

Were I a member of this party, I'd be screaming for a detailed audit of the party books over the last ten years.  This party has taken in millions in donations from supporters, and given a pattern of dishonesty with electoral spending, outright electoral fraud, as well as the ongoing scandals surrounding Harper-appointed senators for abusing the public purse.  It is in both the public interest and party membership's interest to have a full and complete accounting of how the party has utilized the resources placed at its disposal by its membership.  

RoboFraud Ruling

Late yesterday, the Federal Court handed down its ruling on the 2011 Robocall Voter Suppression tactics that played out in several ridings.

Electoral fraud occurred during the last federal election, a federal court judge ruled on Thursday, but there is no proof that it affected the outcomes in six ridings at issue, so the elections will not be overturned.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/Federal+judge+confirms+election+fraud+2011+vote/8427519/story.html#ixzz2UDRApUl0

While I understand that the judge is ruling in essence that the degree of fraud that took place in 2011 wasn't sufficient to justify overturning the results of the election in those ridings, I have to disagree with his conclusions.

First, I think that the ruling overlooks the consequences of voter suppression tactics for Canada's democracy.

Fundamentally, it calls into question the validity of the results of the election not just in the ridings where these games were played, but across the country.  Fraud, no matter the degree, is an explicit and intentional abuse of the electoral system itself.  To prevaricate about "the degree" to which a party engaged in fraud during an election is basically giving the party in question a license to continue using those tactics.  This calls into question the validity of any future elections with that party involved.

Second, the awareness that fraud took place in the last election tells those who vote against that party that their votes will be marginalized even further.  That is a guaranteed way to encourage more voters to simply stay at home - mostly on the basis of "why bother - it's all rigged anyhow".  I cannot blame them when a years-long court battle over known electoral fraud and misdirection ends up with a ruling that is a "split down the middle".

Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley ruled that the calls “struck at the integrity of the electoral process by attempting to dissuade voters from casting ballots for their preferred candidates. This form of ‘voter suppression,’ was, until the 41st General Election, largely unknown in this country.” 

The evidence points to “a concerted campaign by persons who had access to a database of voter information maintained by a political party,” Mosley writes, but says there was no allegation that any of the candidates in the six ridings were responsible for the campaign. 

“I find that electoral fraud occurred during the 41st General Election but I am not satisfied that it has been established that the fraud affected the outcomes in the subject ridings and I decline to exercise my discretion to annul the results in those districts.”

Read more: http://www.canada.com/Federal+judge+confirms+election+fraud+2011+vote/8427519/story.html#ixzz2UDUioi1Y

Frankly, I don't give a damn whether any of the candidates started the campaign of voter suppression or not.  The fact that the party obviously provided access to their database of voter information is enough in my opinion to call the entire thing into question.  Corruption is corruption.  I don't care if it starts with the individual candidate or some committee in the party campaign war room.  Fraud at either end is still fraud.  The guilty party should be held accountable for its actions.

More to the point, Canadians have a right to expect that their elections are free and fair.  Attempting to persuade voters of the platforms of various parties and candidates is fair ball.  Attempting to discourage or outright prevent voters from voting is NOT.

“In reaching this conclusion, I make no finding that the Conservative Party of Canada or any CPC candidates or RMG and RackNine Inc., were directly involved in any campaign to mislead voters,” he ruled. 

“I am satisfied, however, that the most likely source of the information used to make the misleading calls was the CIMS database maintained and controlled by the CPC, accessed for that purpose by a person or persons currently unknown to this court.”

Read more: http://www.canada.com/Federal+judge+confirms+election+fraud+2011+vote/8427519/story.html#ixzz2UDWKbAlF

Whether the judge realizes it or not, he has essentially given the green light to further voter fraud next election.  What he has said boils down to a rather juvenile "It doesn't matter what you do, just don't get caught".  I've heard teenagers use this kind of logic to justify some pretty destructive acts ... and then they get caught.

There should be enormous consequences for this kind of violation for all parties involved.  If the Conservatives provided access to their CIMS database for this purpose, they should be held accountable.  PERIOD.  I don't care if it was the party which did it "officially" or if some agent of the party did it "under the table" - it doesn't matter.  If the party hasn't got adequate access controls on their database, they need to fix that; if they don't have adequate controls over who gets access to that data, that's their problem too.  Ultimately, the party has fought tooth-and-nail against this, meanwhile it's been painfully clear that one of their operatives decided it would be a good idea.  The party - and its leadership - set the tone which led someone to think that electoral fraud was acceptable behaviour.  It should be held accountable.   If you can nail it down to the individuals who perpetrated this, so much the better - hold them to the fire as well.

The courts have dropped the ball on this one.

In a related note, I would point out that the recent Alberta election had the Wildrose Party abusing the robocall mechanism as part of their campaign.  At least they are being held accountable for this.  Granted, WRP hasn't been accused of electoral fraud here.