Con Senators hoisted by their own petards

... in which Conservative Senators harangue Elections Canada CEO Marc Mayrand for answers that he is no longer able to deliver because the Con's Fair Elections Act removed Elections Canada's Commissioner from Elections Canada and placed him under the aegis of the Public Prosecutors Office where Mayrand is not privy to its investigations.

Elections Canada CEO Mayrand had barely begun giving the Senate Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs his report on the last federal election when the Chair interrupts and asks him to wrap it up because they have many questions - questions propelled, it is explained, by the particular interest of Senator Linda Frum. Oh goodie.

Con Senator Daniel Lang: "Registered third parties. Can you confirm that registered political parties are not allowed to accept money from foreign donors over the course of an election?"

Mayrand : You have to be a Canadian citizen.

Lang : We have now seen that third parties can do much more than political parties, such as raising money from foreign interests in the U.S. and elsewhere to influence public policy and elections in Canada. This past election, registered third parties like Dogwood Initiative and LeadNow have publicly admitted that they receive foreign moneys, run campaigns, even published pushpolls under your interpretation of the act as I understand it. All they can't do is advertise over a set amount during the writ. Can you tell me was it the intention of the Act as interpreted by the Supreme Court to allow third parties to actively campaign prior to and during elections?

Mayrand : Within certain limits and spending caps, third parties, provided they register if they spend more than $500, are allowed to do advertising during the campaign. That is specifically provided for in the legislation. 

Lang : So a registered third party during a political campaign, except for a restricted area, can accept foreign money to help run and be involved in a campaign?

Mayrand : They can.

Lang : It has come to my attention that there are a number of these third party registered organizations, who it would appear have been willfully circumventing the Elections Act or acting as a party to circumvent the Act. Can you tell us up to now how many complaints you have received from Canadians, or have you received complaints from Canadians or from political parties related to third party groups and third party advertising, and if so, how many are you actually investigating?

Mayrand : Complaints would have been directed to the Commissioner of Canada's Elections who is tasked with assuring compliance with those provisions, so I would not be aware of the type of complaints the Commissioner has received. 

Lang : So this wouldn't be discussed with you? Because it seems rather strange it wouldn't be. 

Mayrand : With the separation of the offices, we can no longer have those type of discussions so I am not aware of what type of feedback, comments, or complaints that the Commissioner would have received in this matter. 

Lang : What I don't understand is why you wouldn't be aware this type of thing was occurring. In your report you talk about investigations, you talk about contraventions of the Elections Act ...

Mayrand : These are files that were referred during the election by my office, matters brought to my attention mostly by Canadians during the election - allegations that could potentially be an offence - and in that case I can refer the matter to the Commissioner. But I have no sense what the Commissioner or how he will handle those files. He will handle them according to his own protocols, and I am not aware of complaints that are directly addressed to the Commissioner.

Lang : So when are you made aware?

Mayrand : Only if Canadians bring something to my attention, and if it actually raises a matter of potential offence to the Act, then I will refer it to the Commissioner. It's not a two-way communication process. 

Lang : So for the record you have no knowledge of what I just asked.

Mayrand : Not with respect to what is the Commissioner's.



I imagine that Senator Lang had forgotten all about how their party's 2006 Accountability Act removed Elections Canada's power to compel testimony and documents from witnesses, legislation which I'm guessing would be useful if, say, EC wanted to investigate the alleged registered third party election violations that have Senators Lang and Frum so up in arms. 

The senators also seem to have forgotten that, under the pretence of combatting non-existent voter fraud by electors, the Con's Fair Elections Act moved Elections top cop the Commissioner out of Elections Canada and into the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions, so Mayrand isn't privy to its investigations and consequently can't answer or act on the Senators' questions.

Well played, guys.  

And so it went for an hour and forty minutes with the Conservative Senators led by Linda Frum and Daniel Lang badgering Mayrand for answers and opinions about LeadNow and Dogwood Institute expenses, as well as their funding received outside the writ period and therefore outside his jurisdiction. 

Senator Frum was particularly exercised about "an organization in the US that is against pipelines" providing funding to third parties in Canada to hold rallies and music concerts and tell people not to vote for Harper.  

She then brought up Harper v. Canada, the 2004 Supreme Court challenge launched by Stephen Harper as head of the National Citizens Coalition. He sought to strike down Canada Elections Act's legal spending limits on third party advertising during elections. Harper lost that case and Canada was spared much of what became Citizens United five years later in the US. 

I'm not sure in Senator Frum's party shoes that I would have brought that one up.


This week the Liberals repealed much of the Fair Elections Act but media reports that it is dead are somewhat exaggerated. The Liberals have yet to return to Elections Canada either their former independence or their investigative powers taken away under Harper. 

And finally, several Conservative senators pressed Mayrand to agree that given the 2015 Federal Election had the highest voter turnout in years, that it must mean the Fair Elections Act had done its job. 

Words fail me ...
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Steve - the Accountability Firewall Guy

2006 Conservative Party Campaign Ad on Accountability

Interviewer : How is it that hundreds of millions of dollars go missing and no one's in jail?
Harper : Well, look who's in charge. I mean these guys can't even tell the difference between Wright and wrong. 

Interviewer : Ok, we've got a question ... "It's like you get to Ottawa and no one can touch you. How will you change that?"
Harper : You change the people in charge but you also have to change the system. The first thing I'll do is pass the Federal Accountability Act. It's a real plan to clean up government.

Now : Tory changes to accountability rules leave Harper blameless in Duffy affair

When the Conservatives first took power in 2006, Accountable Government: A Guide for Ministers and Secretaries of State said that ministers were responsible for “the actions of all officials under their management and direction, whether or not the ministers had prior knowledge.” ***

But a version of the guidelines from 2011 says: “Ministerial accountability to Parliament does not mean that a minister is presumed to have knowledge of every matter that occurs within his or her department or portfolio, nor that the minister is necessarily required to accept blame for every matter.”

Whew - lucky for Steve, huh? 
Six of his own closest staffers he hired himself - staffers we did not elect and who are not answerable to us - variously colluded in a plot the RCMP allege involved bribery, fraud, and breach of public trust, all while supposedly managing to keep Steve completely out of the loop about it. And according to the revised Accountability Act rules, that isn't his responsibility! 

Presumably this also explains Steve's new mantra in the House of Commons when questioned about the actions of any of those staffers : "There are only two people under investigation."

"Not actually a convicted felon" - it's the new standard for the Federal Accountability Act.


*** The Cons worked this first version to avoid accountability also.
In 2010 - back when parliamentary committees actually worked - the Ethics Committee was investigating  "allegations of systematic political interference by ministers' offices to block, delay, or obstruct the release of information to the public" by political staffers. 
[In those days it was still considered an anomaly to have hired shortpantsers running the government.]
i.e. A gov dept would authorize the release of a document to the public and a Con political staffer would be sent down to retrieve it before it could be released. 
When said staffers were summoned before committees as witnesses to be questioned about it, John Baird or Pierre Poilievre would show up in their place under the guise of "ministerial responsibility for staffers" and run interference on the staffer's behalf.
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RoboCon : The Very Significant Alligator Under the Bed

Kady did such a brilliant live-blog of Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand's appearance before the Procedures Committee last Thursday that I didn't get around to watching it all myself till today.  But now that I have, I think the extraordinary lengths to which the Cons on committee were willing to go to try to shift the blame onto Elections Canada requires a fuller transcript.

As PLG points out at Pogge :

"we know the Pierre Poutine phone alone resulted in 6,700 calls to voters, but these calls only resulted in 70 complaints. So, 800 complaints clearly doesn't indicate only 800 calls.If the ratio held it'd be around 80,000. But I'd figure the ratio in other ridings would actually be higher--since publicity about the whole deal would have been especially intense in Guelph, leading more people to actually come forward. So who knows how many fraudulent calls were actually made--I'd say likely well over 100,000."

So here, given that the PROC committee does not have a transcript up yet, is a partial one for posterity and committee geeks :

Con MP Tom Lukiwski opened with a tirade against a Lib staffer who alerted voters to the fact that Con Marty Burke is reportedly anti-choice without identifying herself in the tagline as a Lib staffer.
Tom's talking point already handily debunked two weeks ago here. 
Next up :

Con MP John Williamson : "800 strikes me as potentially just a few errors per riding in the grand scheme of potential voters. What's your sense of the numbers?" 

Mayrand : "We know in the case of Pierre Poutine that there were at least 6,700 calls placed... What is troubling here is that there were definitely calls that were placed on behalf of people, falsely placed on behalf of people including Elections Canada. When you talk about 800 complaints you're talking about specific allegations with respect to calls received by electors."

Con MP Harold Albrecht of Kitchener-Conestoga amusingly tries to make the case that his party might contact a voter early on in the campaign and receive a response of overwhelming support but that by week five of the campaign that voter might changed his mind and it's possible that voter might perceive a follow up call on election day as harassment. 
Which of course has fuck all to do with pretending to be from EC and directing people to non-existent polling booths or calling people up and being rude or offensive while pretending to be from another party. 
Albrecht : 

"800 complaints in 70,000 polling stations - that's roughly one complaint per 100 polling stations"

Lukiwski :

"If we're looking at only 800 complaints, reasonably founded complaints, over roughly 200 ridings, that's maybe as little as one complaint lodged in a riding or as many as seven complaints in another riding. But based on the election return ... since there's a court challenge in seven ridings, and we're only talking about perhaps an average of four complaints, in other words perhaps as little as four examples, even if they were verified, of a voter receiving a vote suppression or misleading phone call trying to get them to another voting station, or to try and prevent them from voting in itself, what is the level that is required to overturn a result? It wouldn't seem to me that if we're talking about only four complaints, even if they were legitimate, per riding, that that would be enough to overturn an election result. What would it take to actually have you look at even considering the possibility of overturning an election result?"

Mayrand : "The responsibility to overturn an election lays with the court. The court will decide." 

Lukiwski : "But in your opinion ..." 

Mayrand : "My understanding of the legislation is that there has to be a demonstration that the result of the specific election, riding election, were affected by the irregularities claimed by the plaintiffs."

Con MP Bob Zimmer, Prince George Peace River : 

"We're hearing about deliberate acts that are attempting to dissude voters from voting or sending voters to wrong polling stations - I would suggest to moving to more of the non-deliberate acts and we mentioned earlier that there was 84% in terms of accurate calling lists or voters lists, [Note to Bob : EC does not have or give out phone numbers] but that still remains 16% in error and I guess most of us and me I was alarmed to see that number. And you had said that 700,000 were updated but that still leaves 3.1 million in error, and I guess just for Canadians' confidence, and I know that's why you're here, can you relay your confidence in the system with that high amount of error? Can you give Canadians a sense of confidence that we still have a good system? And I'll go back to your numbers of four per riding in terms of complaints, of actual calls, so we see quite a discrepancy in numbers there of significant amouts of errors - 3.1 million as opposed to four per riding in terms of net complaints. So there's quite a gap there like you had stated. How can Canadians still be confidant in the Elections Canada system?"

After pointing out that Canada's electoral system is a model around the world,  

Mayrand :"I would point out that a single elector being misdirected from his poll is a serious offence. At the end of the day, that's what investigations are about... "

Zimmer : "Deliberately or even really if its done non-deliberately - if it's an accident ..." 

Mayrand : "One thing I can assure Canadians and the committee is that calls made on behalf of Elections Canada are not errors. I'm sorry, this is not an error. That's a deliberate attempt to thwart the right of an elector."

Zimmer : " But if ridings are given incorrect data and are responding to that data and Canadians are responding to that data and going to the wrong polling stations as a result of incorrect data, that, simply put, that's ..."

And his time is up. 

Laurie Hawn : 

"This circus, and it is a circus, is undermining, notwithstanding the legitimacy of the processes that need to be followed in order to get to the bottom of it - nobody argues with that -  the circus aspect of this process has served to do nothing but unfortunately degrade the trust of Canadians in their system."

Hawn : Afghanistan, Haiti, blah, blah, blah, after which Lukiwski returns for yet another bout of whine about the Lib staffer busting out Con Marty Burke's alleged anti-choice creds.
Finally, the alligator under the bed makes its appearance :

Con MP Scott Reid : 

".. Is what we've heard an indication of some kind of alligator under the bed? Is something bigger going on or not? The assertion has been at least implied that there's widespread fraudulent either voter suppression or impersonation of Elections Canada or something of that sort. But what strikes me is if there's really an alligator under the bed, that I wonder if the alligator under the bed simply isn't a widespread problem with trying to figure out where people actually live in order to contact them in a way that uh - you can see there is a distinct problem here.  The normal voters list, the normal number of voters who are put in the wrong location, is 16%. You indicated that after you go through and issue the final voters list, it comes down to 12% error rate? Is that correct? That's still millions of Canadians and I know from experience I've picked up that final voters list myself in the last election from my riding. .. It was about 48 or 72 hours before Voting Day so you can understand it's hard to get that data, input it, and that sort of thing, any kind of actual ...In our case we do more print communication - you can't get that out with the list. As a final note - this is not something that Elections Canada has done but I'll make the point - from the last provincial election, Elections Ontario put myself and my wife - we live in the same house - in two different ridings. So things like this occur all the time. It is as a practical matter very difficult to overcome that problem. I think there is a widespread problem here that leads to many of the kinds of complaints you've heard ."

Mayrand : "The list is not perfect and I don't think it will ever be ... people move all the time, things happen. That being said, I still can't reconcile the idea that people pretending to be Elections Canada tried to misdirect people."

Scott Reid : "... but I think I'm right in saying that the number of instances you're going to find of that as a proportion of the total number of complaints people are raising will be very very small."

Just dying to get to the bottom of this, aren't they?
Final obfuscations with bonus veiled threat from Mr. Creosote ...

Dean Del Mastro : "Just to kinda tie things up here - Mr. Mayrand, thank you for your appearance. You've indicated that in the 308 election results you stand behind your determination of each and every riding - that's part of your report that you've already made to this committee and I thank you for that. You've indicated in your report that you find it troubling to hear sometimes sweeping and vague allegations of irregularities being made public many months after the election and not supported by specific facts. We find that troubling as well - we've referred to that as the unsubstantiated smear campaign. 

Uh and I'd also like to point out that we've got a couple of former very significant - well, police chief and a commissioner of the OPP - that have been involved in some very significant investigations and one of the things that they're concerned with are some of the leaks. And I really wanna say that I appreciate your commitment and your comments specifically with respect to keeping these things in the strictest confidence. I can tell you that there's been harm, there's been harm to individuals, there's been harm to companies, even though for example the member from Winnipeg Centre has apologized for a number of the outlandish things that he has said in the NDP, there has been real harm done. Can you just confirm to the committee that you're going to work to make sure that no leaks are occurring from Elections Canada because there's a number of folks in the media that have in fact came forward and indicated to me that they feel Elections Canada has been the source of some of these things, or folks within Elections Canada. Can you just confirm that you're going to echo your comments to this committee that things will be kept in the strictest confidence...."

Mayrand :  "Another case of vague allegation here.[Room erupts with laughter] I can assure you - no, seriously, seriously  - again, there's no source leaking from Elections Canada if that's the allegation. I can attest to that. I think some should be checking their sources."

Committee ends with an all-party agreement to call Al Mathews, the guy heading up the actual investigations, some time before June. 
Maybe he can locate the very very significant alligator under the bed.

Fun fact : Committee members Tom Lukiwski, Harold Albrecht, Scott Reid, and Bob Zimmer are all from ridings where alligators of electoral irregularities have been alleged.

The most significant alligator of all : The Accountability Act of 2006 rescinded the authority of Elections Canada to prosecute offences under the Elections Act and gave that authority instead  to the Director of Public Prosecutions under the  Attorney General of Canada :

"The Director is given responsibility, in place of the Commissioner of Canada Elections, for prosecutions of offences under the Canada Elections Act."

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The Treasury Board President of Gazebos and Funny Funneling

Steve was evidently so pleased with ShamWow Tony Clement's ability to put one over on Auditor General Sheila Fraser by leaving no paper trail of the funneling of $50M of our tax dollars through his own riding office - money purportedly intended for G8 border security - that right after the election Steve made him the boss of all our money - President of the Treasury Board - responsible for ethics, transparency, accountability, and the financial and administrative management of government.

Collateral damage : the compromising of public servants from the Department of Foreign Affairs, Industry Canada, and Infrastructure Canada who may or may not have helped him do it. Now we'll never know. Certainly they denied their involvement to Sheila Fraser but they were there at the meetings with ShamWow Tony, the mayor, and the manager of the Deerhurst Resort when - as Minister of Pork, Gazebos, and Funny Funneling - Clement recommended 33 local projects to then Minister of Transport, Infrastructure and Accountability John Baird, who approved 32 of them.

According to the new AG John Wiersema, apparently having a majority means never having to say you're sorry.

Hill Times . Toronto Star . Pogge. 
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Wednesday Update : Hill Times again.
Seems the municipal leaders in Tony's select gazebo-vetting committee awarded their own projects $41.4-million of the $50-million total. Municipalities not on the committee got to share the $2.5-million remainder.
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Con leakage

Impolitical mops up the latest embarrassing Con leakage -Con MP Kelly Block's staffer Russell Ullyatt who was fired for leaking drafts of confidential Finance Committee reports to at least four Con-connected industry lobbyists.
"I heart you," one of them wrote back to Ullyatt on receipt of his "Thought you'd like to see this in its infancy" covering note.

So whenever CBC's Power and Politics is done wrapping up its important coverage of the opinions of the Bonhomme mascot, here are a few other connections the CBC might consider following. After all, Ullyatt may well have only taken up leaking confidential docs to industry lobbyists for the very first time this week but given he's been swimming in the Con pool for some years now, it wouldn't hurt to ask, would it?

Prior to being hired by Brock, leaker Russell Ullyatt was employed as Senior Special Assistant to Secretary of State Helena Guergis (Foreign Affairs and International Trade).
In 2008 Ullyatt was campaign manager for Con MP Rob Clarke, the former RCMP sergeant who made the news when a "uniformed RCMP officer was spotted delivering campaign signs out of an RCMP truck".

The leaked docs recipients

Lynne Hamilton, former Mike Harris alumnus now a VP at GCI Group, and author of the "I heart you" note.
The GCI Group Leadership Team page lists Ken Boessenkool, former Senior Policy Advisor to Stephen Harper, as Senior Counsel. Hamilton's bio :

7 years at Hill & Knowlton plus previous government posts :
Chief of Staff to the Ontario Associate Minister of Health and Long-Term Care
Ontario Ministry of Northern Development
Environment Ministry media coordinator in 2000 for the Walkerton water tragedy
Ministry of Economic Development, Trade and Tourism -"handled the corporate
restructuring of over 40 companies for the Government"
Ontario Premier’s office co-ordinating the daily issue binder for question period.

Tim Egan, CEO at the Canadian Gas Association.

Founding director of the Natural Resources Stewardship Project aka Not Really Science People - the Tim Ball and Tom Harris climate change skeptics group. Former President of the High Park Group, a Toronto-based lobby organization of which Tom Harris is the former head of its Ottawa office.

Clarke Cross, senior consultant with Tactix Group and former Legislative Assistant to Con/Alliance MPs James Lunney and Leon Benoit

Andy Gibbons of Hill and Knowlton , also formerly a legislative assistant to Con MP Leon Benoit.

Con cabinet ministers and the former political insiders who are now paid to lobby them - you can see how Russell Ullyatt might easily have got the two email lists confused. If only there was some sort of rule to keep the two separate.
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The Accountability Act and throwing babies out of incubators

From Public Eye Online, we learn that PR giant Hill and Knowlton Inc will be joining the C.D. Howe Institute in co-hosting a private roundtable with Treasury Board president John Baird to discuss the Accountability Act -legislation that is supposed to toughen up the rules around lobbying.

Public Eye Online finds the addition of Hill and Knowlton Inc. 'odd'.

C.D. Howe's Duncan Munn explained Hill and Knowlton's presence.

"They're a registered lobbyist. They have different aspects to their business - including media relations and communications and things like that. So, from our perspective, we're operating above the political fray. And the whole point of the exercise is to educate people about the Accountability Act and what's involved."

Ah yes - Hill and Knowlton, the great public educators.
Didn't CBC do a nice little doc - "To Sell A War" - on how they sold the first Gulf War to the American public?

From PR Watch :

"Hill & Knowlton, then the world's largest PR firm, served as mastermind for the Kuwaiti campaign. Its activities alone would have constituted the largest foreign-funded campaign ever aimed at manipulating American public opinion."

Hey, remember this terrific Hill and Knowlton video news release?

"A 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl, known only by her first name of Nayirah. According to the Caucus, Nayirah's full name was being kept confidential to prevent Iraqi reprisals against her family in occupied Kuwait. Sobbing, she described what she had seen with her own eyes in a hospital in Kuwait City. Her written testimony was passed out in a media kit prepared by Citizens for a Free Kuwait. "I volunteered at the al-Addan hospital," Nayirah said. "While I was there, I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into the hospital with guns, and go into the room where . . . babies were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to die." 

Three months passed between Nayirah's testimony and the start of the war. During those months, the story of babies torn from their incubators was repeated over and over again. President Bush told the story. It was recited as fact in Congressional testimony, on TV and radio talk shows, and at the UN Security Council. "Of all the accusations made against the dictator," MacArthur observed, "none had more impact on American public opinion than the one about Iraqi soldiers removing 312 babies from their incubators and leaving them to die on the cold hospital floors of Kuwait City."

At the Human Rights Caucus, however, Hill & Knowlton and Congressman Lantos had failed to reveal that Nayirah was a member of the Kuwaiti Royal Family. Her father, in fact, was Saud Nasir al-Sabah, Kuwait's Ambassador to the US, who sat listening in the hearing room during her testimony.

The Caucus also failed to reveal that Hill & Knowlton vice-president Lauri Fitz-Pegado had coached Nayirah in what even the Kuwaitis' own investigators later confirmed was false testimony. If Nayirah's outrageous lie had been exposed at the time it was told, it might have at least caused some in Congress and the news media to soberly reevaluate the extent to which they were being skillfully manipulated to support military action. Public opinion was deeply divided on Bush's Gulf policy. As late as December 1990, a New York Times/CBS News poll indicated that 48 percent of the American people wanted Bush to wait before taking any action if Iraq failed to withdraw from Kuwait by Bush's January 15 deadline.

On January 12, the US Senate voted by a narrow, five-vote margin to support the Bush administration in a declaration of war. Given the narrowness of the vote, the babies-thrown-from-incubators story may have turned the tide in Bush's favor.

Following the war, human rights investigators attempted to confirm Nayirah's story and could find no witnesses or other evidence to support it."

Selling the Accountability Act to Canada should be at least as easy as throwing imaginary babies out of incubators.
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