MPs allowed to keep seats with no new elections.
by Samantha Bayard
OTTAWA May 27, 2013 (Straight Goods News) – Although a federal court judge ruled last Thursday that fraudulent robo-calls were made to people in the Conservative Party's database in the last election to suppress votes, he let the election results stand and slapped the Conservatives with fines.
Judge Richard Mosley wrote, "I find that electoral fraud occurred during the 41st General Election." While his ruling stopped short of annulling election results, the Council of Canadians, which launched the legal action, called the decision, "A powerful victory for the eight brave Canadian voters who launched their legal challenges and the thousands of us who continue to stand behind them."
The eight applicants had argued that the fraudulent robocalls were widespread, targeted and centrally organized – which is precisely what Judge Mosley found. "I am satisfied that it has been established that misleading calls about the locations of polling stations were made to electors in ridings across the country, including the subject ridings, and that the purpose of those calls was to suppress the votes of electors who had indicated their voting preference in response to earlier voter identification calls," and that "the most likely source of the information used to make the misleading calls was the CIMS database maintained and controlled by the CPC [Conservative Party of Canada], accessed for that purpose by a person or persons currently unknown to this Court."
Judge Mosley praised the eight applicants for their virtue, while chastising the Conservative MPs. "It has seemed to me that the applicants sought to achieve and hold the high ground of promoting the integrity of the electoral process while the respondent MPs engaged in trench warfare in an effort to prevent this case from coming to a hearing on the merits."
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair was pleased that the Conservatives were ordered to pay punitive charges for their tactics during investigation. "That is a damning condemnation of the behavior of the Conservatives both during the campaign and during the litigation. The judge fell on them and actually condemned them to pay costs for all of the procrastination, useless procedures that they kept throwing at it," said Mulcair.
"A damning condemnation of the behavior of the Conservatives" – Tom Mulcair
In the House, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau said, "Justice Mosley ruled that the Conservative Party database was used to commit widespread election fraud and that, in typical pattern for the government, the Conservative Party did everything it could, to quote the judge, 'to block these proceedings by any means.' Why did the government engage in 'trench warfare' to prevent the truth from coming out?"
Later, he told reporters, "The fact that the judge ruled that the Conservative Party database was at the heart of a widespread systemic voter suppression scandal is extremely concerning but also disconcerting is the fact that this government continued true to form and used every opportunity it could to block, to obstruct, to interfere with the investigation into something that should be of concern to all political parties and all holders of responsibility within our democracy."
Conservative database was at the heart of a widespread systemic voter suppression – Justin Trudeau.
About Samantha Bayard
Samantha Bayard is a young journalist living and working out of Ottawa. She has been a contributor to the Straight Goods News family of websites since 2009. She is an avid cyclist and lover of animals.
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