Robocall probe spreads to Kingston

Swamped with reports of bogus calls in 2011 race, Election Canada launches online complaint form

OTTAWA— Elections Canada has extended its probe of phony election calls to include yet another Ontario riding as the watchdog agency launches an online complaint form to help field reports from concerned voters.

Canadians who think “fraudulent calls interfered with their right to vote, or who have information about such calls” are being asked to pass along what they know to elections investigators, it says.

Elections Canada has enlarged its “inquiry” centre to handle the high volume of phone calls and email traffic, agency spokesperson Diane Benson said. The agency has been flooded with reports from voters — 31,000 by last Friday — about harassing or misleading phone calls in the 2011 federal election.

The agency’s experience in quickly ramping up for a federal election is now being used to gear up for the growing investigation, Benson said Tuesday afternoon. “It’s that kind of experience we’re using now to respond.”

The move comes as elections investigators are asking questions about telephone calls steering voters to a fake polling station in the riding of Kingston and the Islands.

Ron Hartling, head of the Liberal riding association there, said voters got “aggressive, loud” calls from people claiming to be from the Liberal campaign in the weeks leading up to the vote.

Then, in the days just before the vote, local voters got calls directing them to fake voting sites, he said.

In one case, a voter got a call the night before the May 2 election from someone claiming to be from Elections Canada who told her the voting station had been moved owing to a heavier than expected turnout. She was directed to a distant church. When she arrived, she found only a woman giving piano lessons, Hartling said. He said the local Liberals didn’t complain to Elections Canada at the time because they lacked hard evidence, such as recordings or phone numbers showing where the calls originated. But last week he did report his concerns, asking that the “net be broadened” to include his riding. On Saturday, he spoke to an investigator for Elections Canada. In the Commons on Tuesday, Liberal MP Frank Valeriote said voters were steered amiss across the country on election day. “In Guelph, it was the Quebec Street Mall. In Kingston, voters were misdirected to St. Joseph’s Church. In Saanich–gulf Islands, it was St. John’s United Church. In Sydney, Cape Breton, a voter was misdirected to New Waterford, 30 kilometres away. Even the member for Windsor–tecumseh was misdirected to St. Anne’s Church,” said Valeriote, who represents the riding of Guelph. “This could not have been one lone Conservative rogue in Guelph. This required collaboration and resources across Canada. This is a pattern of voter fraud that simply cannot be denied,” he said. Elections Canada investigators have also obtained a court order asking the online payment service Paypal to hand over its records related to the Conservative party’s campaign in Guelph. In that riding, reports of fraudulent calls to voters have been traced to a cellphone registered in Quebec under the pseudonym of “Pierre Poutine.” That phone was used to direct automated calls which in turn directed people to cast their ballots at the wrong polling station.

It is hoped the Paypal records may reveal whoever was behind the illegal and undocumented scheme.

Paypal said it had been served with a production order related to the Elections Canada probe.

But spokesperson Martha Cass said Paypal “adheres to a strict privacy policy to protect the confidential information of our users. As a result, we cannot provide additional comment on this investigation.”