Byelections bring robocall risk: Goodale

Liberal deputy leader calls on Tories to pass new law

Because the Conservative government hasn’t taken steps to stop the kind of vote-suppressing calls that marred the 2011 election, the opposition Liberals are warning voters to watch out for misleading automated “robocalls” in four upcoming federal byelections.

Liberal deputy leader Ralph Goodale is calling on Canadians to pay close attention to any election-related phone calls they receive and is advising them to record the messages and contact Elections Canada if the calls seem deceptive.

The New Democrats are also raising concerns about vote suppression, warning that Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament until October will likely delay long-promised reforms to the elections law until after the next election.

The Conservative government last year said it would bring in 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.

Harper promised “comprehensive reforms” in March after Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand released a report suggesting revisions to the law to provide more power to his investigators and stiffer sentences for violators. He warned the changes needed 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.”

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 prime minister would have to call them by the end of November, putting the earliest possible vote on or before Jan. 6, 2014. The election day could fall any time after that.

Goodale said he believes a robocalls-specific bill, based on Mayrand’s advice and supported by all parties, could be 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.”

Although the Conservatives sounded bullish on electoral reforms last year in the eye of the robocalls scandal, they have said little about the topic since.

Pierre Poilievre, the new minister of state for democratic reform, appears chiefly concerned with Senate reform. His office declined an interview request, saying only that Poilievre was “unavailable” to comment Wednesday. Later, Poilievre’s office sent a written statement, saying the government “will introduce comprehensive legislative changes to strengthen our electoral system” but offering no specific time.

“For years the chief electoral officer has asked for clear and specific changes to the Elections Act that will improve elections and bolster Elections Canada’s ability to track down fraud and wrongdoing,” NDP MP Craig Scott said in a written statement. “Unfortunately, Conservatives have failed to act, and now are delaying progress further by shutting down the House of Commons.”

Also still pending are changes to the way leadership loans are handled under the Elections Act. Mayrand called on Poilievre to amend the law after Commissioner of Canada Elections Yves Coté said he could not pursue further legal action against former Liberal leadership candidates who were unable to repay loans to their 2006 campaigns.

Coté said there was no legal remedy available to him in the existing law.

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

Sona, who denies any involvement, is scheduled for a pre-trial hearing on Aug. 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 that 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 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.

“As I’ve said before, we proactively reached out to Elections Canada and offered to assist them in any way we can,” party spokesman Fred DeLorey said in an email Wednesday.

“That includes handing over any documents or records that may assist them.”

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has fined both the NDP and Conservatives, as well as two Liberal MPs, for political robocalls that violated telemarketing rules. The calls failed to properly identify their origin.