Conservative hypocrisy on election fraud

This past week has seen the unfolding of the robocall story, in which it is alleged that the Conservative Party of Canada or someone acting on the behalf of the Conservative Party paid for automated phone calls to be made on election day 2011 to mislead voters to incorrect polling stations. The calls claimed to be from Elections Canada.

The focus is on a riding in Guelph, but Edmonton's Boyle Street is in one of the ridings that has been mentioned in some of the articles. As previous readers of this blog know, Peter Goldring was running for the Conservatives in the riding, with a serious challenge from NDP Ray Martin. Goldring is currently sitting as an independent while the issue of his refusal to take a breathalyzer test is sorted out. He has entered a plea of Not Guilty, which seems odd given that he DID refuse the test. Perhaps he plans to challenge the law. A Conservative who wants to argue for less crime prevention? Definitely not the campaign platform he presented when he was running for office. Things must look different when you are the one charged.

For personal reasons, I do not want to believe that anyone associated with Goldring's campaign had any part in this current Conservative debacle. Unfortunately, Goldring's previous behaviour makes his involvement plausible. Our household was getting a lot of automated calls related to the election - but because we already knew who to vote for and where our polling station was, we just hung up on them without listening all the way through. I am now wishing I had paid more attention.

The misleading calls at the centre of the fraud - and they are illegal - are not a matter of speculation. Thousands of calls were made. Elections Canada received the complaints on election day, May 2. They know which company was responsible for issuing the calls (RackNine in Edmonton). The question of exactly WHO recorded the messages, paid for their distribution, and who knew about the tactic has not yet been settled.The disposable cell phone in Guelph had a phony name registered.

Why did it take more than nine months for the election fraud to be made public?

Let us not forget that we had the election after the Conservatives were found to be in contempt of Parliament. The Conservatives have a history of breaking the rules to suit themselves, and they justify it by saying the Liberals broke rules when they were in power. Yes - but the Conservatives ran on the promise that they would be more accountable. Instead, we have broken rules compounded by coverups and scapegoating.

From Stephen Harper's lies about the Cadman affair to Bev Oda's altering of documents to Peter Goldring's lies about the Boyle Renaissance, this is a party Canadians should be ashamed to support. Here's the kicker: those lies were all known before the election. It is not hard to see why the Conservatives might feel they would need a little illegal help to win their majority.

The issue boils down to this: someone broke the law to help the Conservatives win the election. That someone knew they were breaking the law and took precautions to conceal their identity. The Conservatives then won a majority of seats with a minority of popular vote. They have hurried to put in place legislation that the majority of Canadians do not want. The Harper Government, knowing the law was broken, seems to have done nothing about it until forced by exposure in the media. Even if the determination is that the party cannot be proven guilty for the calls, they are guilty for not taking action earlier.

Now we have a problem, and the solution lies with the rank-and-file Conservatives who supported the liars by voting for them. If they have any moral fibre left, they need to prove it. They must be the ones to take to the streets and demand byelections - even at the risk of losing their majority in the House of Commons. If they do not, then they are supporting corruption by their silence.

The Conservative government treated this as if it was merely a dispute between parties, trouble stirred up  by their opponents. So for nine months nothing was done. Now they are saying they really want to get to the bottom of this. Say what??? Then why did you do nothing about it when it was reported? Did you think everything would be fine as long as no-one could actually pin it on a Conservative?  How long do you think it will be before "Pierre Poutin" is revealed? Why are the media at the forefront of the investigation instead of the government?

I am aware that in talking about Conservative supporters who worked the election in one of the mentioned ridings I am talking about members of my own family. You will also notice that I am not espousing any other party - this is not about party affiliation. During the election I supported a candidate with a track record for honesty and intelligence over a candidate who had promoted hatred and lies - I made my choice based on the honour of the person, not the party. 

So let's get some honourable Conservatives working on this. Come clean. Call the byelections.

Bill C-30 and vikileaks

I have been reading with interest the opinion pieces in major Canadian newspapers regarding Bill C-30 and the vikileaks protest. Most commentators have been moderate, saying that MP Vic Toews should be censured for his behaviour but also saying they do not support the anonymous vikileaks source which distributed personal information related to Mr. Toews’ divorce. This is not the way we comport ourselves in Canada; we are civil, and we do not stoop to such base behaviour.

True. Not ordinarily. But all the protests, science and rational discourse in the world have not been able to sway the ideologues of the federal Conservatives from any of their bizarre schemes. Their legitimacy as a democratically elected government is based on a flawed system whereby a party with a substantial minority of votes can get a majority of seats. 

And on Thursday February 23, 2012, it was revealed that election day fraud was perpetrated last spring, and even if it was not the Conservatives (the news reports keep saying the company that perpetrated the fraud has ties to the Conservatives), the election results in the affected ridings are now in question.

If a party takes advantage of a flawed system and fraud to claim a majority and enact legislation that is contrary to the interests and wishes of the people it serves, then that government's "legitimacy" is questionable. Governments need to serve their constituents, not follow blindly their destructive ideologies and pretend they were elected to do so. By members of Parliament breaking the law or their own rules when it serves their own purposes, the Conservatives have modeled the behaviour deemed acceptable. 

On the topic of internet child pornography: recently there were arrests of 60 people in Ontario related to this. The police seemed to be able to conduct their investigation quite satisfactorily by the processes currently permitted by law. If the Conservatives believe child pornography is so rampant that it merits widespread surveillance and unlimited police powers, then maybe they should be spending more on prevention measures like increasing funding to mental health research and treatment programs. 

My concern over C-30 is complicated. I am one of the people leaning toward "If you have nothing to hide, what's the problem?" But what we have seen over the past few years, with the G20 Summit and the Cadmin affair, now the possibility of large scale election fraud, and the behaviour of local Conservatives Jaffer and Goldring (see previous posts), is a disdain for the law. What I foresee is unwarranted search and seizure to justify passing C-30 - and in cases where the searches don't turn up anything, evidence will be planted. At least having to put your evidence or reasonable suspicions before a judge means there has to be SOMETHING already pointing to a breaking of the law BEFORE the police sieze the property, before it can be tampered with. As it stands, the bill provides this government with a great way to harass or frame anyone they want. I'm a law-and-order/social responsibility kind of person; sometimes that means I speak out against the things members of the government do. That makes me a target. So what would stop a politician from directing the police (and the G20 summit showed how closely they work together) to get my IP address and information, come to my house and take away my computer (which has confidential files related to my work duties) and plant false evidence? Nothing. As the bill is currently presented, it is my understanding they don’t even have to tell you why.

Fifteen years ago I had the experience of being inappropriately targeted by politicians who then didn't even have the decency to acknowledge my civil - even gentle - letters correcting the factual errors they made to the public about me and my work. Those politicians were Reform/Alliance and Conservative. They were completely willing to be judge and jury without any sort of fair hearing. No, I do not trust these people. They have proven that they are not trustworthy. To give these people more power is ill-advised.

How, then, do you stop a majority government that will not accept fact, reason, or logic and that labels anyone who stands up for principles of democracy and justice as enemies of the state or friends of pedophiles?

Vikileaks humiliated Toews, and it was wrong. But Toews needs to understand that an unwarranted search and seizure, without explanation or justification to the person whose property is confiscated, is also wrong. The consequences in terms of lost work, lingering damage to reputation, and the expenses of spurious court cases and investigations – these are far greater than Toews’ having his divorce documents made public. Toews was willing to put lots of Canadians through that process for no discernible reason, other than to populate the prisons the Conservatives want to build, promoting a culture of fear and violence. Since when have those been Canadian values? If what it took for Toews to wake up was a dose of his own medicine, and it worked...

Stephen Harper wants to change Canada (despite Canada working better than almost every other country in the world). He needs to be prepared for the result: Canadians might stop behaving with the civility that used to be our trademark, and the poetic justice is that the monster the Conservatives create will turn its sights on them.

Civil liberties and civility

Big political news in the neighbourhood: our Member of Parliament has decided to sit as a Civil Libertarian instead of as a Conservative. He was elected as a Conservative in a heavily contested riding in 2011 (in Alberta, 66.8% of the votes were for Conservatives but they got 96.4% of the seats. In our riding, Peter Goldring was elected with only 52.8% of the vote).

To see why Goldring is now sitting as an independent Civil Libertarian, read this article from the Globe and Mail.

Note the quote about how it is "hypocritical to hold principles and apply them only when convenient."

It is convenient for Peter Goldring to espouse civil libertarian principles now that he is facing charges for refusing to give a breath sample to the police when he was pulled over during a Checkstop campaign. If you check his voting record in the House of Commons, you could be forgiven for not thinking of him as a civil libertarian. It seems the Honourable Member has voted in favour of some quite non-libertarian bills while he was sitting as a Conservative. For instance, his party's omnibus crime bill, which included elements that even fellow Conservatives find too draconian. Goldring's outspokenness during the marriage debates are another example. Goldring is a civil libertarian when it is convenient.

For instance, according to the articles on his website he is against government support for private sector projects - specifically the new arena the Katz Group is planning in Edmonton. Yet Goldring has several times spoken glowingly of Mayfair Village, a private developer receiving public monies for a housing project, while decrying the non-profit Boyle Renaissance.

That is his right - but it is ironic that he has gone on record as being critical of people who are inconsistent in exactly this way.

Here's the problem: Goldring was not elected as a civil libertarian. He was elected as a Conservative. If he has experienced a conversion - a "Checkstop to Damascus" experience - then the right thing to do is resign and run again in a byelection. Or, if he is truly sitting as an independent civil libertarian, he needs to start voting against the Conservatives when they violate those principles.

The Conservatives ran on a get-tough-on-crime agenda. They claimed all sorts of "unreported crime" was happening, and they want to build prisons to accommdate the prisoners one assumes will be ferreted out by increased government intervention. Goldring supported that stance during the election. Yet when it is Goldring himself being asked to cooperate in a Checkstop - a measure introduced to reduce the cfrime of impaired driving - suddenly Goldring is a civil libertarian.

Some of the things Goldring has voted for in the past - such as mandatory minimum sentences for trafficking minors - I wholeheartedly agree with. But would a civil libertarian agree with them? As a civil libertarian, Goldring might be less palatable to the electorate than he was as a Conservative - and since he did not exactly win by a landslide, the principled thing to do would be to run again. If the Conservatives fielded another candidate, it is unlikely Goldring would beat them.

If Goldring intends to rejoin the Conservatives once his legal woes have been sorted out, that speaks of a different kind of hypocrisy - where his change of principles is a convenience to keep the Conservative party from suffering any ill consequences.

I understand Goldring's position about the Checkstop, but that does not make him a civil libertarian any more than my position on homelessness makes me a communist. Party and philosophy affiliations are not without meaning - and 52.8% of the vote does not entitle Goldring to assume his constituency supports hypocrisy.

Update February 2012: Goldring has discovered there is an actual Libertarian party so he will sit as an independent Conservative instead.