Del Mastro witness deserved better
Investigation: Frank Hall was attacked, Harper did nothing
In June 2012, when the Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia News reported Elections Canada was investigating Dean Del Mastro for violating the Elections Act, Prime Minister Stephen Harper rejected opposition demands that Del Mastro step aside as his parliamentary secretary, and spoke up for him in the House.
But Del Mastro was guilty. On Thursday, he will learn his sentence. Prosecutors want him to do nine to 12 months in jail.
While under investigation, Del Mastro remained Harper’s man on the Commons ethics committee. He helped write the law that will govern the next election. And he used his position in the PMO to repeatedly attack both Elections Canada and Frank Hall, the witness whose evidence led to his conviction.
Hall plans to be in the Peterborough, Ont., courthouse Thursday, hoping for a conclusion of a process that was “at times indescribably difficult.”
Hall has been helping Elections Canada with this case since 2011, when he sent a letter to the agency notifying them that Del Mastro’s 2008 campaign return did not include about $20,000 worth of electoral calls he did for him.
At his sentencing hearing in April, Del Mastro tearfully asked Justice Lisa Cameron to keep in mind how much he has already suffered.
“Everything I have worked for is at risk or lost as a result of these proceedings,” he said. “No one in this court can possibly imagine how much I wish I had never met Frank Hall … and written him a personal cheque.”
Del Mastro wrote that $21,000 cheque on Oct. 10, 2008, a few days before the election, to pay for election calls. It was backdated to Aug. 18, likely an attempt to lay a false paper trail.
At his trial, Del Mastro suggested Hall made up a false story about it and faked emails to destroy him. Cameron ruled, though, his testimony was riddled with “inconsistencies and improbabilities.”
Throughout, Del Mastro insisted Hall was to blame, but provided no evidence of wrongdoing.
When the two men met in 2006, Hall, a former Preston Manning staffer, had a votercontact company, Holinshed Research Group, which was doing $1 million worth of business a year. After he and Del Mastro fell out in a dispute over a contract for a $20,000 computer program, Hall sued him in small claims court.
The dispute damaged his business, since Del Mastro warned other Conservative MPs against doing business with him. Hall went broke. His small claims case fizzled. Potential employers were intimidated by the controversy. Old Conservative friends gave him the cold shoulder.
Del Mastro’s political future seemed to depend on destroying Hall’s credibility. Hall, who has two children, was petrified the PMO was working with Del Mastro to that end.
In September 2012, Hall was working on a contract job for Ekos Research when his boss, Frank Graves, called him into the office to tell him Conservative party lawyer Arthur Hamilton had attacked Hall’s character during a cross-examination in an unrelated court case, where his comments were protected from defamation law by privilege.
“It’s an awful, horrible, humiliating feeling,” Hall recalls. “It’s raw. I can’t describe it accurately enough how that feels.”
Del Mastro also attacked him in the House, where his allegations were protected by parliamentary privilege.
Hall felt unable to defend himself. The pressure on him — the result of the terrible fear of further attacks — was paralyzing. His family suffered. It was a dark cloud over his head.
A witness helping lawful authorities to investigate and prosecute wrongdoing was repeatedly attacked by a senior official in the PMO, and by the ruling party’s lawyer. It’s hard to know why the prime minister allowed that to happen.