Crank-call scandal fits Conservatives’ pattern of political expediency
Here is a list of some of the things we do not know about the Robocon scandal (for those just joining us, the use of automated “robocalls” to harass or deceive – con – voters in certain ridings during the last election). We do not know whether the calls were made by members of the Conservative Party. We do not know whether any Conservative authorized them, or even knew about them. We do not know whether anyone was prevented from voting, or had their vote changed, as a result, nor do we know whether the results of any riding were affected.
But my God, what we know is disturbing enough. There were not a few calls: there were thousands. They did not occur in one or two ridings: there were at least 18 of them, scattered across the country – a handful of which received the automated calls, while 14 received live harassing calls, targeting Liberal households. In all but one the race was viewed as being between a Conservative and a Liberal, and in every one the calls were made to Liberal supporters. (The NDP now claims to have found nine ridings in which its own supporters received similar calls. These remain to be verified.) In some cases, voters were given false information on where to vote by someone pretending to represent Elections Canada. In others, they were annoyed or insulted by calls purporting to come from the Liberal party.
There isn’t any doubt that this was election fraud; whoever did it, if caught, is almost certainly facing jail time. In the particular case of the riding of Guelph, Ont., as reported by Postmedia’s Stephen Maher and Glen Mcgregor, Elections Canada investigators have traced the calls to an Edmonton-based “voice-broadcast” company, Racknine, that has done work for a number of Conservative politicians, including Stephen Harper – though the calls were apparently made through it rather than by it. Elections Canada believes it knows the identity of the caller. One agency email obtained by Postmedia refers to “Conservative campaign office communications with electors.” Another warns: “This one is far more serious. They have actually disrupted the voting process.”
So, no, we do not know for a fact that the calls came from anyone acting on the authority of the Conservative party. But, well, let’s say it fits a pattern – if not of outright lawbreaking then certainly of close-to-the-wind tactics and ends-justify-the-means ethics. The “in and out” affair may not have been the scandal many, including Elections Canada, thought it was, but it hardly spoke of a robust commitment to honesty and fair play. The deceptive calls to voters in Irwin Cotler’s riding of Mount Royal are a still closer precedent. It is not implausible that somebody connected with the party would have taken their cues as to what was considered appropriate behaviour, and run with it.
But who? It beggars belief that local campaign workers in 18 different ridings could have separately hit upon the same scam, or carried it out without the knowledge of anyone outside the riding. The notion that the whole thing could be put down to one over-zealous young campaign worker, as some are putting about, is even less credible. Whoever did this would not only have to have the capacity to organize and fund a national crankcall operation. They would also have to have the lists of names and phone numbers to call. Such information would be closely held with respect to the party’s own supporters. But how many people in the party would have access to lists of Liberal supporters? And how did they get them?
It is hard to overstate how serious this is. It doesn’t matter whether the calls had their intended effect. It is sufficient that someone made them. If it were just the circumstances, or just their track record, the Conservatives might be given the benefit of the doubt. But the two together, while they do not prove anyone in the party was involved, make it all too plausible to believe they were. Indeed, it would be more surprising to find they weren’t.
Which is surely telling in its own right. There are people of whom you would say: it is not possible to believe that they could have been involved in this in any way. And there are organizations whose culture is such that, were it to be discovered that some wrongdoing had taken place, the immediate assumption would be that it must have been a rogue operation. That is not the culture of the Conservative Party of Canada. If it was a rogue operation, it was one born of an altogether different culture.
Ethical standards are fragile enough in politics. Too many partisans view it as war by other means, exaggerating the stakes in order to justify their behaviour to themselves. In the case of the federal Conservatives, that predisposition to expediency is overlaid with a swaggering, bullying style, yet one that betrays a deep insecurity: the insecurity of a party that, for good reasons and bad, believes the system – the media, the bureaucracy, the judiciary – is stacked against it, and that it is therefore obliged, if not entitled, to take a few shortcuts to even the odds.
It is a party that believes it has had to fight twice as hard to get where it is, a belief that has only hardened through each of the many compromises it has made on the way. The progression is sadly familiar. Having first compromised its beliefs, a party finds it is easier to compromise its principles; having compromised its principles, it learns to compromise its ethics; and compromises of ethics, as we have seen in other parties, lead sooner or later to compromises with the law.