Dear
Jim,
It’s
been eight weeks since the news first broke that
call centres affiliated with the Conservative
Party of Canada placed thousands of illegal phone
calls to stop non-Conservative voters from
reaching the polls in the 2011 federal election.
We’re writing today because you took part in
Leadnow’s campaign calling for a full and
independent public inquiry into the election fraud
crisis.[1]
The crisis has shaken Canadians’
confidence in the fundamental core of our
democracy - free and fair elections.
Together, you set the agenda from the
start. The NDP, Liberals and Greens have all
called for some form of public inquiry, and
Canadians overwhelmingly support the
idea.[2] Harper’s Conservatives are alone
in resisting this public scrutiny.
Now, we
want to update you, and ask for your input
as we work together to protect the basic integrity
of our
democracy.
Elections
Canada is investigating, but the investigation is
not public and their powers are limited -
significantly, even if they find evidence of
organized fraud, they cannot overturn the results
and order a new election.. Under current
Canadian law there are only two ways to overturn a
compromised result and order a new election: a
voter or candidate can launch a court challenge of
the result in their riding, or the Governor
General can dissolve the current Parliament, and
order a completely new election. With your help,
legal challenges are now underway in seven of the
affected ridings.
Over the last few
weeks, we have seen growing evidence of systematic
electoral fraud. New evidence clearly
links illegal calls to the Conservative Party of
Canada’s voter-tracking database, and shows that
thousands of non-Conservative voters were targeted
in different ridings. For more details we’ve
included a full update below.
As
the evidence casts even more doubt on the
legitimacy of the last election, we face a
deepening democratic crisis. This
democratic crisis becomes more urgent each day as
the government rolls out its sweeping plans to
remake Canadian society.
To begin
to restore the basic integrity of our democracy,
Canadians need to answer two
questions:
1. Is the party in
power responsible for, or complicit in, systematic
election fraud?
2. If so, then what should be
done to restore the basic integrity of our
elections?
As we plan our next steps to
help Canada find a resolution to this democratic
crisis, we want to know what you think should be
done.
We’ll use
your answer to help design the next chapter in
this campaign. With hope and
respect, Jamie, Matthew, Julia, Emma, Ryan and
Adam on behalf of the Leadnow.ca team PS -
We’d like to do a lot more on this campaign, and
we need your help. We have a very small, efficient
team and we rely on donations from people like
you. We would like to launch a major new phase of
this campaign to put this issue back in front of
Canadians, and a local campaign to challenge
Conservative MPs to protect the basic integrity of
our democracy. Please consider donating
today. Even $5 or $20 helps. Thank you!
http://www.leadnow.ca/en/donate
The
Election Fraud Crisis - the story so
far...Last May, thousands of
voters received illegal robocalls and live calls
pretending to be from Elections Canada, telling
them their polling station had moved. Reports came
out at the time, but nobody knew the scale of what
happened. In mid-February 2012 the scandal
exploded after a freedom of information act
request revealed that Elections Canada had traced
the calls to a company working for the
Conservative Party of Canada. We launched our
campaign, and over 44,000 Canadians joined you to
call for a full public
inquiry.Elections Canada
is investigating, but the investigation is not
public and their powers are limited -
significantly, even if they find evidence of
organized fraud, they cannot overturn the results
and order a new election. Under current
Canadian law there are only two ways to overturn a
compromised result and order a new election: a
voter or candidate can launch a court challenge of
the result in their riding, or the Governor
General can dissolve the current Parliament, and
order a completely new
election.With your help, we
reached out across Canada to find voters who’d
received fraudulent calls. Hundreds stepped
forward, providing the evidence that has allowed
us to work with the Council of Canadians and
launch legal challenges to election
results in seven of the closest ridings where
there are serious allegations of widespread
fraud. [4] We also passed on all the
reports to Elections Canada to aid their
investigation. Thousands of Canadians
have taken to the streets in two days of action,
organized by volunteers across the country. We
helped promote the rallies and invited many of you
to take part, and your call for a public
inquiry was the main rallying cry of the protests
across Canada.The evidence of a
systematic effort to suppress non-Conservative
voters continues to grow. We’ve learned a lot in
the last two weeks, and there is now strong
evidence that the lists of voters targeted by
illegal calls came directly from the Conservative
Party of Canada’s voter-tracking database, called
CIMS.
- Annette Desgagne, who
worked at a Northern Ontario call center that
placed calls for the Conservatives in the 2011
election, has stated in a sworn affidavit that
she was instructed to call voters with a script
that gave them false information that their
polling station had changed. She spent three
days making those calls, and the Conservative
won the riding by only 18 votes. Call centre
operatives received phone numbers to call from
CIMS, and logged the results of their calls to
CIMS.[5]
- Elections
Canada compared phone records from RackNine, one
of the companies whose systems were used to make
illegal phone calls, to the Conservative Party
of Canada’s CIMS database that tracks voters.
They found a perfect match between the Guelph
phone records, and the Conservatives’ list of
non-supporters.[6]
- A
major new cross-country poll just found that
Canadians who had already told campaign callers
that they were not going to vote Conservative
were almost twice as likely to receive a call
falsely telling them their polling station had
changed. 10 to 15 per cent of voters or about
30,000 to 50,000 people received deliberately
misleading calls aimed at suppressing
non-Conservative votes in the seven key ridings
where legal challenges are underway.
[8,9]
- Expert
witness Bob Penner, president and CEO of
Strategic Communications Inc, stated in a sworn
affidavit that "The only plausible
explanation for such calling to have occurred is
for someone at the senior level in a central
political campaign to have authorized the
strategy and provided the data and the
funds".[7]
Sources:[1]
Leadnow.ca campaign for a full, independent public
inquiry: http://www.leadnow.ca/robocall-fraud[2]
Canadians
seek public inquiry into robocall allegations:
poll[3] Robocalls:
Conservative Party’s firm directed voters in
Northern Ontario to wrong polling stations, says
former employee[4] Robocalls:
Activist group files legal challenge of results in
seven ridings[5] Former
phone-bank worker files sworn affidavit over
election calls[6] Robocalls
probe extends to Tory headquarters[7]
Tories
dismiss robocalls accusation[8] Robocalls:
Up to 50,000 voters received deceptive calls:
pollster[9] Fraudulent
election calls 'widespread' in 7 ridings, poll
suggests[10] For more on the Council
of Canadians' legal challenges see: http://canadians.org/election
Leadnow.ca is an
independent community that brings Canadians
together to hold government accountable, deepen
our democracy and take action for the common
good.
Please
support the Leadnow.ca community! We're
funded by people like you, and our small team and
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