Sona remains in jail while judge ponders bail request
Michael Sona will spend another weekend in the Maplehurst Correctional Complex after a judge decided to reserve judgment on his bail hearing Friday.
Sona has been at the maximumsecurity detention centre in Milton, Ont., since Nov. 19, when he was sentenced to nine months for his role in an election-day robocall that sent hundreds of voters in Guelph, Ont., to the wrong polling station.
Sona’s appeal lawyer, Howard Krongold, filed notice this week seeking leave to appeal the sentence and the conviction.
As he was incarcerated 10 days ago, Sona released a statement through a friend saying that he is innocent of the crime.
Krongold told Justice Harry LaForme that he should release Sona on bail because if he stays in prison until the appeal is heard, it will be too late.
“This is a sentence appeal that will almost certainly be moot by the time the appeal is heard,” he said.
Krongold argued that, because there are no precedents in sentencing for Canada Elections Act offences, the sentence needs to be reviewed.
Federal prosecutor Nick Devlin agreed with Krongold that it is appropriate for the appeal court to consider the sentence but argued that the severity of the crime means Sona should be locked up while the appeal goes on.
“He broadcast a lie for political gain,” he said. “Instead of stealing his victims’ money, he tried to steal their vote, and succeeded in doing so.”
Sona, who did not testify at his own trial, also did not take the opportunity to speak at his sentencing hearing in October.
“Mr. Sona still accepts no responsibility and expresses no remorse,” said Devlin on Friday.
Krongold argued that, for the purpose of “general deterrence,” anyone considering committing a similar crime could note the impact the case has had on Sona’s life.
Devlin said that Sona wouldn’t do the same thing again because nobody would let him.
“Mr. Sona likely won’t do this again because it’s unlikely anybody will let him within 100 miles of an election campaign.”
LaForme said the case “really makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.”
“This really attacks one of the fundamental principles of our democracy,” he said.
Krongold replied: “This is the challenge in this case.”
LaForme reserved judgment, meaning Sona will spend at least the weekend in detention.
The election day calls used data from the Conservative party’s voter-contact database and were arranged using a disposable phone registered to the now-infamous pseudonym Pierre Poutine.
Sona has always maintained his innocence and claimed he had been scapegoated by the Conservative party.
In delivering his guilty finding, Judge Gary Hearn said there was evidence presented at trial to suggest that Sona did not act alone. He made no finding about who else participated but pointed to evidence related to Guelph Conservative campaign manager Ken Morgan and deputy campaign manager Andrew Prescott.
Prescott was given an immunity deal in exchange for testimony against Sona, his former friend. Hearn dismissed most of Prescott’s testimony as self-serving.
Morgan moved to Kuwait and has never spoken to Elections Canada investigators. Neither has been charged.
In the statement Sona released on the day he went to jail he called for a public inquiry into the deceiving calls in the 2011 election.
Yves Côté, the commissioner of Canada Elections, has closed the investigation into the Guelph calls.
In April, he halted a three-year probe into allegedly fraudulent calls across Canada, concluding that “the evidence gathered in the investigation does not lend support to the existence of a conspiracy or conspiracies to interfere with the voting process.”
On Thursday, Green Party Leader Elizabeth May wrote to Côté, asking him to reopen his investi- gation, based on Sona’s case as well as the judgment issued in 2013 in a Federal Court legal challenge of election results in six ridings, which was backed by the Council of Canadians, a left-leaning publicinterest group.
In those cases, Judge Richard Mosley found insufficient evidence to overturn the election results in the ridings but did find a “concerted campaign by persons who had access to a database of voter information maintained by a political party.”
Lawyer Steven Shrybman said on Friday that the deterrence value of Sona’s sentence is undermined by the failure of authorities to get to the bottom of voter suppression allegations.
“The failure of the commissioner and the government to follow up will undermine the confidence of Canadians in the electoral process,” he said.