The Fraud Squad

So, now it’s out, and what thousands thought to be true has been verified.  Federal court judge Richard Mosley ruled yesterday that election fraud did indeed take place in the last federal election and that the finding is a huge embarrassment to the Harper Conservatives.  In the judge’s words:

The calls struck at the integrity of the electoral process by attempting to dissuade voters from casting ballots for their preferred candidates.  This form of ‘voter suppression’ was, until the 41st General Election, largely unknown in this country.”

Well, it’s known now and we have evidence that an abiding sickness, a cancer, has infiltrated our electoral process that threatens our very standing as citizens in general, and the democratic state specifically.  It is a seminal moment, sadly eclipsed by all the other scandals presently running through Ottawa in the last few days.To be clear, Judge Mosley did not blame the Conservatives or the candidates, but concluded that fraud was committed regardless.  Again in his words, “I am satisfied, however, that the most likely source of the information ... was the CIMS database maintained and controlled by the Conservative Party of Canada, accessed for that purpose by a person or persons currently unknown to this court.”This is a moment that is decidedly personal for me as well.  Following my loss in the last election, I spoke out, and blogged about fake calls coming into the riding that contained fraudulent information as well as purposeful efforts to send voters to the wrong polls.  I knew it because I experienced it repeatedly in the last two weeks of the campaign, as did a large number of my volunteers.  The media picked up on the story immediately and asked if I would be filing an official complaint.  After much soul-searching, both my wife and I felt that, in such a cynical time concerning politics, we did not wish to disillusion citizens even further.  Since then, however, over three dozen citizens approached us with verification of having received the now infamous robocalls.  I encouraged them to contact Elections Canada with their evidence and left it at that.It was admittedly a difficult occasion two years ago to realize that some group had infiltrated my own city with such cynical tactics.  A week later my wife and I received a phone call from a Conservative politician who confirmed that something of the kind had occurred and he extended his regrets, saying he found it “sick”.  This, too, I told the media.  A good Conservative MP friend said in an interview that week that his party “would never do such a thing.”  We now know that, at the very least, their party permitted contacts to be used for such dubious practice.  I’m also sure that those Conservative politicians who denied such things will never go public and speak out against the practice.  Such is the state of modern politics in Canada.In no way do I believe that the Conservative candidate who defeated me had any knowledge of what was going on.  Three weeks ago I went public on Facebook and congratulated her on the second anniversary of her win.  Some Liberals weren’t happy with that approach, but I felt it was the respectful thing to do.  Yet it was something I never would have undertaken if I believed she had taken part in the scheme.  It remains exceedingly troubling, however, that a party’s candidates can’t even run their own local campaigns in the full knowledge of what is going on.So where does all this leave us?  I can only wrap it up in one word - diminished.  As the judge said, this is new to Canada.  A cynical batch of hyper-partisan operatives - the Fraud Squad - have soiled the entire political process in Canada, and us along with it.  And don’t think it’s over.  True, the Conservative Party might act far more carefully in this next contest, but it has been their actions of the last year that have revealed just how cynical their political tactics have become.  This was a serious effort at rooting out injustice in our political system - something every Canadian should welcome - but at every turn the Conservatives, through their lawyers, prevaricated.  It even disgusted the judge enough that he concluded they had, “indulged in trench warfare in an effort to prevent this case from coming to a hearing on the merits.”  This is damning, to be sure, but very much consistent with what we are seeing in Ottawa this past week.Three groups of people deserve credit for helping to bring this cancer into the light, even when citizens themselves showed little interest.  Journalists Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor followed this story and dug relentlessly for facts in a fashion that was above-board and well-researched.  The Council of Canadians took this case to court, despite the costs of hundreds of thousands of dollars.  They took on a powerful political party, and despite all the obfuscation, they prevailed.  They won for us and it financially cost them.  To Maude Barlow and the Council I can only say personally, “Thank you - not just for what you did for the process, but for validating my own experience two years ago.”And then, of course, we should all express our gratitude to those average citizens who donated, researched, and sacrificed great emotional and mental effort in continuing to believe in the legal and democratic processes, even as a political party sought to curtail them.The past has now been verified.  The present is now more incisive.  The future should now be ours to resolve and reclaim.