So things’ve taken an interesting turn in the land of Canadian politics: the Conservatives have been accused of all-out election fraud, in the form of misleading phone calls directing voters to incorrect or non-existent polling stations, impersonating Elections Canada officials, and posing as Liberal or NDP staff while making harassing, annoying, or otherwise unwanted phone calls (ie, calling people in the middle of the night, calling people repeatedly, etc). The first two are illegal under the Canadian elections act, while the third is in murkier legal territory, it clearly falls under the category of Scumbag Tactics.
The scope of the calls is impressive–over 50 ridings have been implicated, and Elections Canada has received 31,000 complaints. I am… astonished. I’m not surprised, because considering how the Conservatives have acquitted themselves these past few years, I’d only be surprised if I could find a level they won’t stoop to to get their way. But the breadth of this is amazing–31,000 people complaining to Elections Canada! For context, they normally get about 500-1000 complaints each election.
The allegations first came to light early last week in Guelph, and one party worker there (who briefly made national news during the election when he tried to steal the ballot box at the special poll set up at the University of Guelph) resigned as a result, and the Conservatives are trying to insist that now that he’s resigned, all’s well and fixed. But the allegations increased, more and more people came forward, and by now it’s abundantly clear that it’s not just one or two rogue partisan workers behind this. The reason all of this took so long to come out is that the stories are scattered, and until people start to come forward en masse, the true pattern doesn’t reveal itself.
But the pattern is very, very clear; it’s vanishingly improbable that such an array of people from MPs to citizens to call-centre workers are all making this up. Sure, MPs (or would be MPs–people like Martha Hall-Findlay*, who lost by a few hundred votes, are among the voices accusing the Conservatives of making harassing calls) have something to gain by this, but the call-centre workers? They work for low pay and are easily replaceable labour–they are more likely to be fired than to gain a shred of benefit out of coming forward. But there’s records saying that during the election, some call-centre workers were questioning whether or not they should be saying they’re calling from Elections Canada.
Most of the focus has been on the robocalls (which misdirected people to non-existent or incorrect polling stations), but we shouldn’t forget that there were live calls too. It’s not totally unconvincing that there was an unfortunate but unintentional error with an automatic calling system, but there’s a lot less wiggle room when there are live people are doing the calling. People have judgement, and can ask questions when things sound fishy, like, when you’re told to say you’re calling from Elections Canada, and your polling station is waaaaay across town from where you live. That is really what makes this both convincing and incredibly alarming to me. There is a good chance that we could have a significantly different make-up of the House of Commons, had there not been systematic voter suppression.
Because while the Conservatives can dance around this as a get-out-the-vote initiative gone awry, that’s what this winds up being: a systematic voter suppression effort. People do not have time to drive back and forth across town looking for their polling station. People do not have an interest in participating in an election when their interaction with political parties consists of obnoxious or harassing phone calls. People do not always have patience to sift through conflicting information when their voter card says one thing but they have a seemingly official call on their answering machine saying another. And what happens? Those people don’t vote.
Canadians are sent as observers to make sure that elections in other nations are conducted fairly, freely, and honestly. We are a nation that is internationally regarded as a nation that can hold other nations accountable for holding honest and fair elections, and our governing party may well have won if not the election then at least some seats on the basis of dishonest, underhanded, and illegal tactics. I’ve spilled a lot of digital ink in this column decrying the Conservatives’ motives, tactics, and actions, but I think this is a new low for them.
And I hope that Canadians at large see this as the troubling and problematic situation that it is, because if not, then what on earth is it going to take before we as a nation wake up to what is going on in our name under our noses? If Canadians don’t care about illegal voter suppression, if we don’t care that the foundations of democracy are been flouted, what do we care about? How can a nation as a whole, which is peaceful, prosperous** and generally not coming apart at the seams, just… not care that our elected government has no respect for the laws of the land that they’re charged with crafting and setting?
I know it’s a national joke that we care about politics only in passive once every four years, but the past decade as proven to us time after time after time that we can’t keep doing than and expect our nation to continue to thrive. We need to open our eyes to the gravity of these accusations, and if the fallout from 31,000 complaints to Elections Canada can’t do it, I don’t know what can.
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* I may be a card-carrying NDPer, but I think Martha Hall-Findlay (a Liberal) is the bee’s knees. She’s very smart, an excellent speaker, and a straight-shooter take-no guff sort of person, and she’s exactly the sort of person we should be electing on all parts of the political spectrum.
** Of course that prosperity is spread unequally, and there are swaths of Canadians who don’t find themselves or the things that directly impact their lives and livelihoods not represented in the House, and who may be turned off politics for entirely different reasons.
24 replies on “31,000 Complaints to Elections Canada Can’t All Be Wrong”
The dooziest of conservative doozies is the man-splanation that it was the Liberals who were making the calls, because they were sore-losers even way in advance of losing the election, and so wanted to (further) rig the election they knew they were going to lose, so they harassed and mis-directed voters so that they would have fodder for an attack against the conservatives. Â Seriously.
Um what?
I know! Clearly the conservative party needs to get on hiring more republican spin doctors from the US because that’s pretty much the worst excuse for election fraud I’ve ever heard.
You know, I remember getting a phone call, but we’d already voted, so we ignored it. (And I have no way of proving whether it was one of these or not)
Guess next time I’d better pay more attention to the robots!
Same here. I know we went online to Elections Canada to double-check because we had heard on the radio that bogus calls were being made. I can’t remember for sure though if we got one of the calls.
Gosh darn it. How on earth are Europeans and Canadians supposed to be snooty if there are problems in our countries?!
I once attended a very small breakfast (about a dozen people) with MHF when she was running for the Liberal leadership. Â She was impressive to say the least. Â Usually when I hear of a new up and coming female politician I get my hopes up and then they are almost instantly dashed. Â However, I have maintained my fandom of MHF over the years.
They say a strong government is only as effective as the opposition and I, while despising them, don’t lay the blame solely at the feet of the Tories. Â All of the opposition parties currently in parliament are a travesty and allowing Harper’s Cons to run rampant over them. Â I keep hearing about how terrible QP has become so I took a few minutes to watch some of it. Â It’s a travesty. Â The complete bullshit of reading questions and answers with no real questions and no real answers is insulting to Canadians. Â A lot of the blame lay at the feet of the speaker, he needs to go. Â This is becoming reminiscent of the Chretien era when with no effective opposition all Canadians lose, no matter their political affiliation.
Oh god, don’t even get me started on the QP circus. It’s theatre in the absolute worst sense of the word, and that’s what Canadians see as Politics! No wonder so many Canadians just throw their hands up in exasperation.
Oof, I read the QP transcripts at work, I Â have to stop because it’s making me look bad in front of my co-workers, how much I swear at my computer screen…
This, literally, makes me feel ill. I had heard on the radio that there may be bi-elections in some ridings, but only if this goes to the courts. Which it should. I don’t want a scapegoat. I want firm and palpable punishment for whoever is found to be at the (Harper) head (Harper) of this.
This should DEFINITELY be going to the courts, based on the evidence that’s come out and the scope of the allegations, but I’m not holding my breath that it’ll get much of anywhere legally. I wish Elections Canada had more legal power to force the Conservatives to hand over the tapes, because that would significantly increase the chances of this going to court. And it goes without saying that I am all for firm and palpable punishment for whoever orchestrated this.
I hear so many redic things about your elected officials lately. :-/
And I’m guessing you’re only hearing a small portion of the continual WTF-fest that Canadian politics has become lately. It’s bloody embarrassing.
Oh, I know. not as well as y’all obviously.
And by lately, I mean the last 5-10 years. The progressing levels of redic over time have been mind boggling.
Redic is a nice word here for mother fucking clusterfuck
My thoughts exactly.
This would go with a massive woopsedaisies. The worst is that some people won’t even think about this and still support the party that did it. Because hey, what the heck.
In Canada, of all places?! I’m speechless. Except for “pulling shit like this better land someone in jail”.
I KNOW RIGHT?
Yeah, my uncle has monitored elections in the former Eastern Bloc for PACE for years, so I figured I’d heard about all manners of election fraud imaginable, but this is revolting even by those standards.
Even if the PMO didn’t explicitly write a memo with instructions to defraud the election, the government’s choices and systematic abuse of power have created an environment in which this approach seems bloody plausible to some people. It’s an appalling abuse of our trust, and I’m scared that he’ll get away with it, like he did with the overspending , and when he was found in contempt of parliament for refusing to divulge the costs associated with that panacea of a crime bill. The level of arrogance is shocking. I began to actively distrust him in one debate when he said “I support the arts, my daughter takes piano lessons”. My esteem has only plummeted since then.
TOTALLY. I swear, this entire column could probably be replaced by this gif:
(perhaps with more cursing) pointed at the Conservative caucus. I keep trying to write about other things (Quebec tuition strikes! Why people don’t get involved in politics! The NDP leadership race!), and then they go and pull nonsense like this, and how can I not write about it?
It took me at least half a dozen comment edits to get that to work. Let it not be said that I am not a dedicated, if inept, commenter.
I tip my hat to you – I’ve not managed that fancy embedment (true word!) yet.
Can we have tag lines for our avatars/ profiles? Because “Millie: dedicated commenter” is great!
Can you tell me more about Elections Canada? Are they supposed to be an independent body or are they government-run?
Elections Canada is a very explicitly non-partisan civil service agency that runs all federal elections here. They’re definitely an independent body, though they don’t have as many teeth as they probably should to take the government to task about this. I’m not 100% clear to what extent they can demand evidence from the government, and the government has said today that they’ve no intention of releasing the call tapes. But yes, Elections Canada is well regarded and aggressively non-partisan, and totally not at issue here.