The Curious Case of Michael Sona

These few lines at Radio Canada and Adam Donaldson's Guelph Politico Blog are the only mentions I have found anywhere that Michael Sona, convicted of aiding and abetting unknown perp(s) in an unsolved crime of unknown proportions, lost his sentence appeal on May 18 and headed back to jail to serve out his nine month sentence.

Sona, with nothing to deal and no electronic or material evidence of his guilt produced at his trial, was such a likely fall guy.  

A couple of weeks before the 2011 election, CPC HQ had sent him out to halt voting at a special election poll at Guelph U that CPC HQ disputed the legality of and his name hit the media bigtime.

Elections Canada's investigation into the robo/live calls misdirecting voters across two thirds of the ridings in the 2011 federal election appeared dead in the water in 2012, but public interest was rekindled when reporters Stephen Maher and Glen McGregor exposed "Pierre Poutine" as the perp and the robocall company RackNine as the source of the calls into Guelph. 

Con Party robocaller Matt Meier of RackNine - you might remember him from the dubious Con Party 2013 Saskatchewan election boundaries robocalls debacle - traced the missing Poutine evidence on the RackNine hard drives and fired it off to EC investigator Al Mathews, along with a heads up to CPC HQ. Months earlier he'd sent another heads up to Andrew Prescott, Sona's Guelph campaign co-worker.

Then out of the blue on Feb 23 2012, Brian Lilley announced on Sun News that 
1) the Cons had identified Sona as a suspect, 
2) Con Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton was on the case, and 
3) Jenni Byrne had given Sun News a statement denying CPC HQ involvement. 

A shocked Sona called everyone he knew at CPC HQ to find out what was going on. According to Sona, CPC lawyer Arthur Hamilton called him back and told him not to worry about anonymous sources. 

Hamilton subsequently delivered a sixpack of Con staffers to Al Mathews and sat in on their interviews on the CPC's behalf as they told their stories of Sona asking how to pull off an anonymous robocall and later bragging of having pulled off the Pierre Poutine robocall scheme, the latter details of which were by then widely available in the media.

Elections Canada dropped their investigation into other suspects and ridings and the RCMP granted immunity from prosecution to the Crown's star witness Andrew Prescott. Prescott's "evolving" testimony at trial - Sona's post-election toast to "Pierre", burner phone packaging in Sona's waste bin, and Sona's euphoric election morning office announcement "it's working, it's working" - the Crown stressed several times, "should be approached with caution". 

The three minute difference between the end of a 4:12am Election Day Pierre Poutine log out at RackNine as Client 93 and a 4:15am Andrew Prescott log in from the same IP address in the Guelph campaign office as Client 45 was never adequately explained at trial. 
However Prescott testified that sometime before 7pm that same day, an hour before polls were to close anyway, Guelph campaign chief Ken Morgan handed him the Pierre Poutine RackNine account log in info and instructed him to put a stop to the "Counter Fake EC" robocall. 

Mr. Morgan later decamped to Kuwait without ever being interviewed by Elections Canada and Mr Prescott destroyed the Guelph campaign computers.

Sona did not testify at his trial, as is his right, after repeatedly maintaining his innocence of the charges against him and therefore his lack of knowledge as to who else might have been involved. His lawyer Norm Boxall was confident they'd won their case according to Sona, given the lack of any material or electronic evidence connecting Sona with either RackNine or Pierre Poutine or a CIMS list of non-supporters. Sona did not have access to CIMS.

On August 14 2014 however, Justice Gary Hearn found that, while apparently not acting alone, Sona authored the initiating email to Racknine and purchased one or more of the various credit cards and the burner phone in order to direct Guelph voters to the wrong polling station on May 2 2011. He believed the testimony from the Conservative staffers and campaign co-workers, or rather, as he stated in his summation, he could not believe the Conservative staffers and co-workers made it all up.

In sentencing Sona in November 2014, Hearn found that despite defence lawyer Norm Boxall's characterization of Sona's actions as possibly a "prank gone terribly wrong", nine months in prison was :

"necessary in order that the public and particularly those involved in political campaigns at any level will appreciate that the courts regard this type of activity as criminal and to be treated seriously."

So off Sona went to jail and was back out on bail pending appeal of his sentence which he has just subsequently lost.

Guelph resident Susan Watson wrote the following day in the Guelph Mercury :

"Sona certainly didn’t access non-supporter lists in Winnipeg South Centre, Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar, Elmwood-Transcona, Nipissing-Temiskaming, Vancouver Island North and Yukon. In a court case involving these six ridings, Justice Richard Mosley found that “misleading calls about the locations of polling stations were made to electors in ridings across the country, including the subject ridings.”

If he knows who it is he is doing time for "aiding and abetting", Sona isn't saying. 

Stripped of their in house authority to prosecute election offences courtesy of Harper's 2006 Federal Accountability Act, and with the no longer independent Commissioner now housed under the Attorney General's roof courtesy of the Fair Elections Act, Elections Canada has quietly rolled over and gone back to sleep. 

The website for Peter Smoczynski's documentary film Election Day in Canada : The Rise of Voter Suppression has two new interesting pieces on Sona :

Sona on his realization he had been pegged as a suspect, and

Stephen Maher's reflections on Sona as a fall guy after his conviction, in the film's trailer


Also see Michael Harris : 'I'm Tired': Michael Sona on robocalls, his suicide attempt -- and the road back
.

RoboCon : Skippy vs Lenny

"What happens," asked the Ottawa Citizen, "when a “Pierre Poutine”-style robo-caller, like the automated system that sent Guelph voters to the wrong polls in 2011, meets a robo-responder like Lenny?"

"Every minute Pierre Poilievre's telemarketer spent with our recording was time she wasn't bothering someone at dinner."

And we thank you for that, Alberta software developer Mango 

The telemarketer calling here on behalf of the re-election campaign of Pierre Poilievre, champion of the Fair Elections Act, told "Lenny" she was from "Campaign Support". 

Guelph-based "Campaign Support" made calls into Liberal MP Irwin Cotler's Mont-Royal riding in the fall of 2011 suggesting that Cotler may be resigning so how's about you support our Steve in a non-existent upcoming by-election? 

From Campaign Research principal and Conservative strategist Nick Kouvalis' affidavit : 

“The calls were conducted under the business name of Campaign Support, which is a business name registered by Campaign Research for the specific purpose of conducting telemarketing activities.”

Cotler was not of course considering resigning at the time and kicked up a stink about the dirty tricks telephone campaign in the HoC. 
House Speaker and $8198.79 Campaign Research client Andrew Scheer dismissed the campaign as "reprehensible" but not actionable, thereby preserving Campaign Research's other founding principal - Richard Ciano, president of the Progressive Conservative Party of Ontario - from being dragged into any committee investigation of his firm's actions.  

Kouvalis, also former campaign chair and chief of staff to Mayor Rob Ford, promptly went on CTV to explain that his job is "ending Liberal politicians' careers". 

Campaign Support was soon spun off Campaign Research as a separate legal entity headed up by Kouvalis and Greg Dunlop. Dunlop left Kouvalis's firm two months ago after four years - if LinkedIn can be believed - and now heads up his own telemarketing firm iFusion Research.
iFusion also used to be a shell company for Campaign Research 

Here's Steve in 2011 campaigning in Irwin Cotler's Mont-Royal riding on behalf of Con hopeful Saulie Zajdel, presumed beneficiary of the later Campaign Research phone campaign. 
Zajdel lost to Cotler and was put on the payroll in Heritage Minister James Moore's office as a shadow MP doing ethnic outreach while awaiting a new shot at the riding.

Zajdel pled guilty this year to charges of corruption and breach of trust in two real estate deals involving tens of thousands of dollars in bribes.

Conservative Party spokesey Fred DeLorey expressed surprise at Zajdel's arrest in June 2013, saying none of this had come out in their screening of Zajdel. 
A few months earlier, DeLorey was also surprised when McMaher busted the Conservative Party and RackNine shell company Chase Research for being behind the Republican-style push-poll robocalls about changes to Saskatchewan's electoral riding boundaries. 

And so the story has turned inevitably back to Con robo/live calls ... which is where I think we came in... 
.

RoboContractors

If the Public Prosecution Service of Canada is so concerned that Michael Sona's nine month sentence for election fraud is "demonstrably unfit and fails to reflect the gravity of the offence” - so concerned in fact that they are appealing to have his sentence increased - why don't they direct that same concern towards investigating the Pierre Poutine perps behind him? 
Especially given both the judge and prosecutor in the case stated that Sona didn't act alone.

So reasons the Council of Canadians in their new formal complaint to the PPSC.

“PPSC is not an investigative agency,” responded PPSC spokesey Dan Brien. “It’s not in our mandate to initiate, conduct or direct investigations.”

Meh, said a spokesey for Elections Canada Commissioner Yves Côté, who now falls under the purview of the PPSC thanks to the Fair Elections Act, noting that the case is now closed as far as they are concerned unless someone submits a formal complaint or new information comes to light. 

“We conducted an investigation. All of the evidence that we found was presented to the Crown,” Michelle Laliberte told Global News.

"Asked if the office has received more information, Laliberte said, “Not at this point.”

Really?  
Andrew Prescott's immunity-protected testimony that he logged out of his own RackNine account on election day only to log back in again a few minutes later onto the Pierre Jones/Poutine account on the instructions of Guelph election campaign chair Ken Morgan who decamped to Kuwait after refusing to be interviewed by Elections Canada - that isn't "new" or "more" information? Isn't a new lead? Isn't worthy of further investigation, if not a few subpoenas?

You know, it's really too bad Canada lacks a national police force who could look into this kind of crime on our behalf when they aren't busy dragging a 61 year old woman off her walker and throwing her to the ground and handcuffing her for being unclear what was being asked of her, or protecting foreign oil corporations from local protesters or First Nations, or protecting themselves from the possibility of staples, or shooting a vet with PTSD twice in the back and killing him on his own property because they didn't have a warrant to follow him into his house or .... where the hell was I? Oh yeah ...

In the absence of any interest from the horsemen, and for an idea of how much help Council of Canadians can expect from the Elections Canada Commissioner this time round in their bid to have the Poutine case in Guelph re-opened, lets have a look at the commissioner's response to their request for help in their March 2012 election fraud court case, launched on behalf of six plaintiffs from six ridings :

In early August. Commissioner Yves Cote refused to give a federal court more details on its ongoing investigation into the robocalls scandal.

To avoid sharing the information, Cote filed for a special exemption, saying releasing it would “encroach upon the public interest,” and that “public disclosure of information from a partially completed investigation carries the serious risk of compromising the investigation by, among other things, influencing the testimony of witnesses, impairing the ability to verify information already obtained and affecting the willingness of witnesses to speak.”

And then, as far as anyone knows, some time after that they just stopped.

Jan 1 2015 Update : Elections Canada confirms total lack of interest in pursuing election fraud.

.

RoboCon CREEPshow trial of Michael Sona

At left is the draft statement robocall trial star witness and Guelph Con campaign worker Andrew Prescott sent to the accused, Michael Sona, in July 2013.
Read it first.  Really.

Three freaking years later and three days into the CREEPshow trial charging Michael Sona with sending robocalls out to more than 6,000 Guelph voters in the May 2, 2011 federal election directing them to the wrong poll locations, a couple of new things stand out.

It was indeed Andrew Prescott who logged out of his own account at RackNine on election day only to log back in again a few minutes later on the Pierre Jones/Poutine account. He did so on the instructions of Guelph election campaign chair Ken Morgan who gave him a handwitten note with the Poutine credentials. 

So Prescott was Poutine for Morgan in this instance of its use at least. However Prescott has an immunity deal with the Crown to testify against Sona and says he didn't know the significance of the alternate log-in until Sona mentioned "Pierre" later in the day in a toast that Prescott didn't remember until April 2014! 

So why isn't Guelph campaign chair Ken Morgan on trial here? Other than that he decamped to Kuwait in 2012 of course and has never been questioned by Elections Canada afawk. I guess it's a case of love the one you're with here. 

From the robocalls trial twitterfeed of Glen McGregor, Stephen Maher, Globals' Laura Stone, and Laura Payton at CBC. Excerpted  : 

• Prescott says he was in Burke campaign office until the early hours, until sun up, on May 2 (e-day)
• Sona was in his cubicle on that early morning of election day, Prescott says.
• Prescott says Sona asked him about how to log into RackNine after 4:00 am on election day. "I was suspicious," he said [but he complied].
• In February interviews with Elections Canada, Prescott couldn't recall Sona asking about RackNine.

Wait.  If, as per Matt Meier's testimony, the Pierre Poutine account on RackNine was set up on April 30, and if as Prescott is implying - Sona is Poutine, why would Sona be asking Prescott the following morning how to log in to RackNine?

• When sun came up, Prescott says he slept on the couch in the office for a few hours.
• Sona came out of office: "was shaking, ecstatic, and said in a low voice, 'It's working,'" Prescott says. Sona was "quiet, almost euphoric"
• Later, as they heard [from their own supporters telling of calls saying that polling stations were closing early], Ken Morgan came up to Prescott and said "We need to counter this. They're bombing our supporters."

• Then Morgan approached Prescott later day and said "I need you to stop the dial"
• Morgan approached Prescott's desk; Prescott went to RackNine website and found he was logged in.
• "I went to pending calls page and noticed there was a pending dial to go out and I immediately cancelled it," Prescott says.

After the election day vote count, Prescott :

• People were having drinks and cigars, toasting Harper, "MIchael [Sona] had a cigar in his hand and said something like thanks, Pierre, and laughed" 

Interesting because their Guelph campaign had just lost the election so the thanks to "Pierre" would have been about bogus calls made to voters in 200 other ridings that Elections Canada has since completely lost any further interest in.
Also, Prescott says he did not *remember* Sona toasting "Pierre" until April 2014!

Also new and newish :
In Nov. 2011, RackNine CEO Matt Meier gave Prescott a heads up that Elections Canada Al Mathews was looking at Prescott's calls re fake polling station info before Mathews contacted Prescott the same month.
In March 2012, Meier discovered the Poutine IP info and passed it on to EC Al Mathews; he also copied the same data to Con headquarters.  

• Prescott agrees he kept information about Morgan asking him to stop a dialer to himself until immunity deal in 2014. Also withheld re Sona saying "It's working".
• Prescott says he saw a burner phone on Sona's desk and packaging for it in his garbage can. Previous to today, Prescott only mentioned packaging. Says he told EC about burner phone on Sona's desk in second interview with EC that Con Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton asked not to be recorded.

Prescott's memory of events three years ago has improved a lot over the telling :"The more I thought about it the better my recollections," Prescott said.

• Prescott's computer and campaign computer disc drives all destroyed.
• In Feb this year Prescott offered Ken Morgan help to also get an immunity deal.

Given the appalling quality of his self-absolving testimony, you have to wonder why Prescott was granted immunity. Possibly CPC did not much care for his statement about Nixon dirty tricks (see pic).

Con layer Arthur Hamilton's four pet Hill staffers/interns also testified that Sona bragged to them afterwards about being Poutine and masterminding the whole shebang. Aside from the odd dramatic account of sign-stealing car chases, their accounts contributed nothing that wasn't already public knowledge from the media over the last three years. All very *mostly* lone wolf tv bad boy.

And it's a wrap. Sona not testifying, nor key players Ken Morgan, out of the country; Arthur Hamilton, instumental in setting up the case against Sona; and the frequently mentioned Jenni Byrne, who restricted EC access to witnesses, etc etc.

Pic at top via Laura Stone at Global is "draft statement Prescott read in court when he thought he wouldn't be able to attend CPC convention" because his name was connected to Poutine robocalls .
Note reference to Nixon's CREEP* and "widespread, national, well-organized scheme" and "not the work of any lone staffer". Prescott clarified yesterday his statement refers to national scheme, not Guelph.

OK then.

*CREEP : Richard Nixon's Committee for the Re- Election of the President, of Watergate fame
.

RoboCon Pop Quiz : Spot the Difference!

Thwap asks a very good question :

What exactly is the difference between 

1. Elections Canada and federal prosecutors granting immunity to Con deputy campaign manager Andrew Prescott this month in the 2011 Guelph robocall election fraud case, and

2. Elections Canada refusing to grant immunity to a group of donors willing to testify about giving $1,000 each to Dean Del Mastro’s campaign, allegedly in return for receiving $1050 back from Del Mastro's cousin.

July 2012 : Elections Canada refuses immunity request for donors to Dean Del Mastro

"Elections Canada has rebuffed an offer of information about an alleged reimbursement scheme involving Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro’s 2008 election campaign, saying it doesn’t have the authority to give witnesses immunity from prosecution.

Elections Canada spokesman John Enright said Tuesday that the commissioner is not able to grant immunity... it can only investigate allegations of electoral misconduct and that the power to offer immunity rests with federal prosecutors."

although Toronto elections lawyer Jack Siegel says : 

"the commissioner can negotiate compliance agreements with people who have violated the act, which allows the office to effectively offer immunity from prosecution."

Robocalls immunity deal struck with ex-Tory worker Andrew Prescott

"A key player in the 2011 Guelph robocalls scandal is getting immunity from prosecution in the Elections Canada investigation into misleading calls in the last federal election, CBC News has learned.Prescott has a written guarantee "the Crown has no intention" of charging him in connection with the misleading phone calls."

So what's the difference? 

Aside of course from the fact Del Mastro was Steve's parliamentary secretary, election fraud pointman, and key spokesy in the House at the time, while Prescott's Con candidate Marty Burke didn't win his seat anyway and the Guelph case appears to be hermetically sealed off from the election fraud that occurred in over 200 other ridings. 

Admittedly Del Mastro is now being charged by Elections Canada in a separate investigation for overspending his 2008 campaign limit and trying to cover it up, and they are continuing their investigation into the 22 people who were issued cheques for $1,050 from Deltro, owned by Dean's cousin.

But Thwap's question remains : What exactly is Election Canada's criteria for involving Crown prosecutors in securing immunity for witnesses? Especially given it seems highly unlikely Prescott was granted immunity just to roll over on Sona in the case against him provided by Con Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton. 

If Sona goes down, the Cons will draw a line through it and say it's done : One rogue lone gun on the grassy Guelph knoll that didn't change the election results in a single riding in the 2011 election anyway.

.

It's a small small small Con world

Top Conservative party operative says she didn’t know of plan to cover Duffy expense tab, reads the headline. 

Nor did she speak to Nigel Wright or Senator Gerstein about it apparently.

That top party op is Pierre Poilievre's ex, Jenni Byrne - Conservative Party director of political operations, national Con campaign director during the 2011 election, and Steve's once and perhaps future director of issues management in the PMO.

But then when you read the article, it turns out to be the Con Party spokesy Fred DeLorey answering all the reporter's questions on Byrne's behalf by email. Nothing directly from Byrne and no follow-up questions.

Mr. DeLorey, you may recall, also initially denied that the Cons were behind the January robocall pushpoll in Saskatchewan regarding electoral riding redistricting, while Poilievre, who once founded a robocall company of his own, said they were done by Chase Research. Eventually Chase Research was outed for having done the calls on behalf of the Cons as an affiliate of RackNine, the company used by Pierre Poutine to make the election fraud robocalls in Guelph.

For her part, Jenni Byrne denied the Cons had anything to do with the Guelph robocall election fraud, issuing an email to say that the Cons ran "a clean and ethical campaign", notwithstanding they had to fire Patrick Muttart from their election war room after he sent Jenni Byrne's close friend SunNews CEO Kory Teneycke that bogus Iggy war photo.

But back to the article. 
Commenters below it point out the obvious - the unlikelihood of the Con Party director of political operations knowing nothing about a PMO/Con Party plan to bribe a sitting senator causing them headaches for his silence. 
Three comments are the angry rebuttals of one commenter, William Donaldson.  
While he has every right to his defence of Ms Byrne, is this the same Bill Donaldson who was Pierre Poilievre's first campaign manager and Nepean-Carleton EDA president back in 2006 under Manager of Political Operations for Ontario, Jenni Byrne? [fourth link down marked DOC]

It's a small small small Con world. 
Pull on any Duffy/Senate/election fraud thread and the same names come up over and over again.
.

RoboCon : Michael Sona and Sun News Network

Former Guelph Con Party communications director Michael Sona relates how he was sitting in his Hill office on Feb. 23 2012 when he was shocked to hear Sun News reporter Brian Lilley fingering him on air for the Guelph robocalls election fraud. Sona  : 

 "I contacted a few people at [Con] headquarters and I just said I wanna know what's going on. Like why am I being thrown out here because Sun News is you know kind of an alternate method of getting press releases and other stories out from the party, right? I mean everyone knows that, right? It's just a standard comm's tactic. And I knew if this is on Sun News, this isn't just some you know hack journalist picking up some story that he's fabricated in his head. This is someone. Someone is feeding him this."

Sona eventually hears back from Con Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton who tells him not to worry about anonymous sources.

Excerpted from that 2012 Sun News broadcast with Brian Lilley :

"The Conservatives have someone identified already on who they think this could be. ... We've been talking to sources here for the Ottawa bureau for Sun News Network and they're pointing towards on individual in particular. His name is Michael Sona. ... We're waiting on an official statement on this but sources are saying at this point it appears it is this one individual, a Michael Sona, who has associations with the campaign, may have worked on a local campaign, but he's not, was not with the national Conservative campaign. So then it becomes a question of was this a directive from the top, was this someone acting on their own locally to try and help their candidate win? ... "

Lilley says Con lawyer Arthur Hamilton is already on it - praises him as a "no-nonsense guy"

"But it does look at this point that it was Michael Sona who was behind this ...."

A statement is then read out from Steve's political director Jenni Byrne denying Con Party headquarters involvement. Back to Lilley :

"Sources say that it does look like it was Michael Sona who was behind this but no confirmation for sure, no charges laid at this point and we'll wait and see what Mr. Sona himself has to say. We'll be reaching out to him today of course as well."

After the broadcast and a phone call from Jenni Byrne, Con MP Eve Adams asked Sona to hand in his resignation.

DefMin Peter MacKay answering a question on the Guelph robocalls three days later :

"I think they've identified the individual that was involved in this ... and that individual is no longer in the employment of the party."

Eye-bleach graffic above inspired by the cover of Brian Lilley's popular runaway! runaway! bestcellar book CBC Exposed  which accuses the CBC of being the state broadcaster : 

"This book takes on the holy grail of the Canadian media landscape and lays bare the truth about CBC. Reckless reporting at the state broadcaster has ruined lives ...

"Ruined lives" indeed. Michael Sona, forced to resign his job on the Hill the day of that Sun News broadcast, is still waiting for resolution a year later.

Big City Lib blogged on Thursday that Harpercrat Action Plan ads appear to account "for well over half of the adverts on the Sun TV website."  

"Does this amount to a government subsidy...the Harper Gov. throwing money to a message friendly news service?  And if so, does that make Sun TV Canada's REAL state broadcaster?"

Certainly the Conservative Party seems to think so. 
Just before the last federal election, Patrick Muttart, Harper's former deputy chief of staff and chief marketing strategist for the Conservative Party of Canada, forwarded what appeared to be a photo of Michael Ignatieff in Kuwait in US battle fatigues on to former Harper spokesy now founder and VP of Sun News Kory Teneycke - presumably for election news publication. Teneycke caught it in time.
Muttart, who had moved to the Canada/ US practice of a US marketing firm, told reporters that at the time, he was both an unpaid advisor to Sun News to launch their TV network and "on the Con payroll as a consultant to the party's election war room."

CBC is the national public broadcaster. Sun News Network, as Michael Sona puts it, is an alternate method of getting stories out from the party.

Michael Sona's video interview with McMaher on Friday , btw, well worth a full listen.
.

RoboCon : Poutine made easy

Text : Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher
Presentation : Robert Cross
Ottawa Citizen

This excellent interactive visual has been around for a while but with 6 other ridings in court this week challenging election fraud, perhaps we could use a refresher on just how devious was the trail of deception from the diabolical Mr Poutine in Guelph. [h/t Toe at Bread 'n Roses]

Not mentioned in it is how undetermined staffers from the Con election campaign in Guelph came to share a Racknine browser session with Mr. Poutine at 2am on Election Day.

McMaher's liveblog of the day's proceedings here.

A couple of today's notable discrepancies ...

When Election Canada sent alarums about bogus phone calls re polling station changes to Con lawyer Arthur Hamilton 3 days before the election, Hamilton emailed in reply :

"A number of our candidates" have had to confirm polling station …"

 But it was actually RMG who made those calls on behalf of Con Party central.

Hamilton also stated today that Elections Canada never advised parties not to phone electors about polling station changes, however EC's May2 Election website states :

In response to an initial request from a member of the Conservative Party of Canada, the preliminary list of all election day polls was sent to all parties. Because a polling site can be replaced by another at the last minute, and to ensure that electors always have access to the most accurate information regarding their location, Elections Canada indicated to political parties that the list supplied should only be used for internal purposes and that parties should not direct electors to polling sites. Political parties were invited to refer electors to the Elections Canada Web site, their local Elections Canada office or their voter information card for locations, to prevent electors from being directed to incorrect polling sites. Some political parties did not comply with this request.

As noted at Saskboy's in comments, it seems more than a little odd that longtime Con Party  lawyer Arthur Hamilton is part of the case as well as the Cons' lawyer on the case.
.

RoboCon : Cross-border election shopping

A Republican operative convicted of perpetrating election phone fraud for the Republican National Committee told interviewer Stephen Maher that "fraudulent calls in the last Canadian election are likely an American import" and a "fairly sophisticated operation".


Allen Raymond wrote a book about his stint as a GOP dirty trickster called How to Rig an Election in which he explains the use of tactics like phone jamming political opponents - hey, did Elections Canada ever investigate the over 10,000 phone jamming calls used to disrupt the NDP's online leadership vote this year ? - as well as harassment live calls intended to discourage opponents from voting at all. 


Raymond says he was approached for the illegal phone work by an RNC field director he knew called Jim Tobin, a regional chairman of George Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.
The RNC spent years and millions of dollars defending Tobin through umpteen court cases and appeals to choke off the flow of election fraud charges at just Raymond. When Raymond realized he was going under the bus alone, he talked.


Today the Ottawa Citizen and the G&M both report Elections Canada has confirmed 'Pierre Poutine' launched his fraudulent robocalls from the Guelph Con campaign election office.
Stephen Maher explains on CTV here.