Goodale warns upcoming byelections at risk from deceptive robocalls

By GLEN MCGREGOR, OTTAWA CITIZEN

OTTAWA — With the government failing to deal with misleading robocalls used in the last election, Liberal deputy leader Ralph Goodale says there’s a risk the tactic could be used again to corrupt four upcoming byelections.

Goodale is calling on Canadians to pay close attention to any election-related phone calls they receive and advised they record the messages and report them to Elections Canada if the calls seem deceptive.

The Conservative government last year promised legislative changes to prevent misleading calls of the kind reported by voters in Guelph and other ridings in the 2011 election. The six-month timeline for the bill has long passed.

Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand tabled a report with suggested revisions to the law, which included more power for his investigators and stiffer sentences for violators. He warned the changes need to be put in place by 2014 to be ready for the general election expected in the fall of 2015.

But in April, the Tories suddenly scrapped the long-overdue electoral reform bill the day before it was to be tabled in the House of Commons.

“With no proactive legislation in place and no sign of it on the horizon, we need to put this warning in public domain so voters are aware of the risk,” Goodale said at a press conference in Ottawa Wednesday morning.

“We all need to be alert to the risk of this happening again. I think we have to keep this on the top of people’s minds.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has yet to ask the governor general to schedule byelections to fill four open seats — Toronto Centre, the Montreal riding of Bourassa, and Manitoba’s Provencher and Brandon-Souris ridings.

If all four are held on the same day, the vote would have to be on or before January 6, 2014.

Goodale said he believes a robocalls-specific bill, based on Mayrand’s advice, could be put in place before the byelections are held.

“The timing is tight,” he said. “It would take a very expeditious process but the government should try.

Elections Canada has laid a single charge against former Conservative campaign worker Michael Sona, over the “Pierre Poutine” robocalls that directed Guelph voters to the wrong polling location on election day.

Sona, who denies any involvement, is scheduled for a pretrial hearing on August 29.

Elections Canada continues to investigate more than 1,300 other complaints about misleading phone calls from 200 other ridings.

A Federal Court judge threw out a legal challenge of the election results in six ridings, based on misleading calls, but said in his decision it was clear fraud had occurred and that it was likely the Conservatives’ voter-tracking database, CIMS, was used to make some of the calls.

Goodale said the fact that Prime Minister Stephen Harper hasn’t called in the RCMP to investigate suggests the party doesn’t think the data was hacked or stolen.

The party has always maintained that it is working with Elections Canada to identify who accessed their data.