O’toole says Mackay team hacked Zoom calls
OTTAWA • Erin O’toole’s Conservative leadership campaign is asking police to investigate the team of his chief rival Peter Mackay for allegedly obtaining “stolen” internal campaign data and video strategy conferences from O’toole’s campaign.
The O’toole campaign says it is filing requests for investigation to the RCMP, Ontario Provincial Police and the Toronto police due to overlapping jurisdictions. Its complaint names an alleged senior organizer with Mackay’s campaign. It alleges the organizer obtained “confidential O’toole log-in information,” but does not specify how that may have been done.
The allegations in O’toole’s statement have not been proven, and Mackay’s campaign spokesperson Chisholm Pothier dismissed it as an accusation coming “late on a Friday of a bad week for the O’toole campaign.”
“If someone from the O’toole campaign leaked information, the O’toole campaign should be talking to their volunteers,” Pothier said. “It is not surprising that this is a tactic being trotted out the same week that Erin O’toole performed very poorly in the debates in front of Party members and Canadians.”
The organizer did not respond to multiple voice mails and a text message sent on Friday. Mackay’s team confirmed the man was a volunteer with the campaign.
O’toole’s campaign said it filed its complaint to the police forces on Friday.
“Today, the Erin O’toole campaign is filing a formal complaint and request of investigation with the RCMP, OPP, and Toronto Police Service against the Peter Mackay campaign and (a) senior Mackay campaign organizer,” said a statement provided to the National Post.
“The complaint involves the theft of confidential O’toole campaign data and strategy, including specifically the theft of Zoom video conferences, including confidential campaign strategy video conferences, and of video conferences with Conservative Party members across Canada. The complaint comes after an in-depth investigation was launched by the O’toole campaign after we discovered our systems were hacked earlier this week.”
O’toole’s campaign says their investigation found that the organizer “obtained confidential O’toole log-in information on June 5.”