A closer look at the CRTC Voter Contact Registry

The Fair Elections Act mandated the first ever Voter Contact Registry. 

Phone-bank companies, candidates, political parties and third party groups hiring an outside company to make live and robo calls had 48 hours from the start of their use in a campaign to register with the CRTC. Parties and candidates making their own in house calls were not required to register. The DoNotCall list does not apply to political calls.

This same Fair Elections Act prevented release of the list til a month after the election. This meant voters were unable to check it to see if the calls they were receiving were legitimately registered with the CRTC - not that it would have mattered in the case of Pierre Poutine in the last election as he hid his use anyway.

The CRTC list was published a week ago: 

"A total of 1460 registrations have been filed to the CRTC for the 42nd General Election, including 554 from calling service providers and 906 from other persons or groups."

At first glance, the list appears to be one long list of Con MP/candidate names and phone service providers so I added them up :

118 Con candidates used Responsive Marketing Group (RMG), for live calls

92 Cons used ElectRight for live/robo calls or both, Bergen, Clement, Raitt, Nicholson, and Scheer among them.

38 Cons used Nik Kouvalis' Campaign Research/Campaign Support for live/robocalls or both, including Harper, Poilievre, Oliver, Alexander, Rempel, Leitch, O'Toole, Lukiwski  

But First Contact, which told CBC that in the 2011 election it "provided services to more than 80 Liberal candidates", is listed on CRTC's 2015 Voter Contact Registry simply as 

where "Both" refers to both live and robocalls. No names or numbers so we don't know how many Liberals signed up with them for how many calling contracts this time.

Likewise NGP VAN, a Washington DC company used by Obama in 2012 on which Liberalist is based, is just listed as : 

Perhaps NGP VAN is considered "in house" but I wonder on what grounds the CRTC allowed First Contact off the hook about their specific use in a list that is supposed to be about public disclosure. 
Glen McGregor writes : Compared to their rivals, Tories used a whack more telephone contact firms during the election
but I don't think we can know that if data for large firms are missing.

Onwards ...

127 Liberals used Prime Contact Inc

Only 4 Cons used RackNine this time round, Jason Kenney being most notable.

5 NDP candidates used Strategic Communications. This appears to comprise the entire extent of reported NDP phone campaigning for individual candidates. There were another 4 Strategic Comm listings for the NDP Party at large.The bulk of Strategic Comm users were third party groups like unions, Greenpeace, and Council of Canadians. The NDP as a party also used Direct Leap Technologies.

And lastly, a brief look at Blue Direct, new to me and used by Stephen Harper, Jason Kenney, and 10 other Cons for both live and robo calls according to the CRTC list. 
In his 2014 book, Winning Power: Canadian Campaigning in the Twenty-First Century, Tom Flanagan writes Blue Direct is owned by a former student of his, Matt Gelinas, formerly of RMG and the Manning Centre. 
Gelinas' partner at Blue Direct is Richard Dur, a Morton Blackwell Leadership Institute alumnus, seen here being honoured as Leadership Institute graduate of the week in 2011 :

“LI graduate and Canadian Member of Parliament Rob Anders said it well when he described LI training as ‘taking a drink from a fire hose,’” Richard said.

Ok then.

Edited for clarity.
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THE RISE AND FALL AND RISE OF RMG

Prior to the 2011 federal election fraud/robocalls scandal, few Canadians had ever heard of CIMS, the Conservative Party of Canada’s national permanent voter-tracking database, or its close relationship to Responsive Marketing Group or RMG, the Conservatives' main GOTV phone bank and fundraising company used in that election by the CPC national campaign and 97 individual Conservative candidates.

Canadians did not know that the Conservative Party paid RMG $1.4million and provided them with a CIMS voters list and a script for its call centre employees to read to voters. That script, according to Canada Elections investigators, read in part : 

“Elections Canada has changed some voting locations at the last moment. To be sure, could you tell me the address of where you’re voting.”

This last in direct contravention of Elections Canada's request that "users of the dataset of all polling sites respect the following restrictions: that the dataset be used for internal purposes only; that it not be used to inform voters of their voting location."

As it happens, the percentage of voting stations across Canada that changed location in the final week of the election was just 0.003.

In their section on RMG in the 2014 Summary Investigation Report on Robocalls, Elections Canada reported that investigators who listened to the recorded live calls noted that “RMG provided wrong poll location information in 27% of the cases involving complainants.”

“In some cases the difference was a few kilometres; in several cases the difference was more than 100 kilometres. The furthest location, provided to an elector called twice by RMG, was 740 kilometres from the correct location.”

“From April 29 to May 1, 2011, returning officers in 11 electoral districts reported elector complaints of incorrect poll location information coming from Conservative Party callers. When contacted by returning officers, local Conservative Party campaigns advised that the calls were from the national campaign of the party, and that the campaigns could not stop them.”

“Investigators were told by the Conservative Party national campaign chair that Elections Canada had no authority to limit a party's use of the poll location data.”

The Conservative Party’s partnership with RMG dates back to 2003 when RMG founder and president Michael Davis pitched the idea of a fundraising machine attached to a national permanent CIMS database to Stephen Harper's mentor Tom Flanagan.

Mike Harris strategist Stewart Braddick came on board to head up Target Outreach, an affilliate firm providing "fundraising and direct voter contact solutions to U.S. Right of Centre Political Organizations". 
Greg Kaufman signed up with RMG in 2007. From his bio at RMG parent group iMarketing Solutions, where he became Chief Knowledge Officer in 2010 :

"Greg has extensive experience in IT management. For six years, he worked for the Ontario PC Party as part of the IT / Direct Voter Contact Team. There, he helped develop CIMS, a revolutionary political database tool that is in wide use today.

Following his time with the Ontario PC Party, Greg spent three years working for Elections Ontario as a manager in the register division, where he compiled and managed the Provincial Voters List."

Flanagan : “CIMS provided a receptacle for the hundreds of thousands of records generated by RMG’s large-scale calling programs.”

In 2009 Preston Manning at the Manning Centre for Building Democracy presented RMG founder Michael Davis with the Manning Centre Pyramid Award for Political Technology, “recognizing RMG's role in helping to build the conservative movement in Canada” :

“Since its inception, RMG has raised more than $75 million for right of centre causes in Canada, and helped to elect hundreds of 'right of centre' politicians at municipal, provincial and national levels."

In March 2010 RMG parent company iMarketing Solutions merged with Xentel, a company with an alarming history of lawsuits on both sides of the Canada/US border over its fundraising practices. That year they spent $1,839,000 on equipment to update their dialing platform and another $1,453,000 in 2011.

In the first quarter after the 2011 election, iMarketing Solutions posted $24M in revenue, but according to their Canadian Stock Exchange statement : "For the year ended December 31, 2011, the Company had a loss of $5,253,000."

A 2012 legal challenge supported by the Council of Canadians was based in part on the affidavit of Annette Desgagne, a RMG call centre worker who reported that three days before the 41st federal election she and her co-workers were given scripts to mislead voters on election day into going to the wrong location to vote.

From the Desgagne 2012 affidavit :

“The new scripts we were to read did not identify that we were calling on behalf of the Conservative Party nor did we mention the local Conservative candidate. The new script, as far as I can recall, was as follows: “Hello. My name is Annette Desgagne. I am calling from the Voter Outreach Centre. Elections Canada has made some last minute changes to the polling stations.”

Conservative Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton served motions to have the case thrown out of court before the supporting evidence had been filed. 
RMG CEO Andrew Langhorne, a former election campaign worker for Stephen Harper and seven years a Director of Voter Contact and Information Management for Premier Mike Harris and the Ontario PC Party, filed an affidavit in August calling Desgagne's affidavit "categorically false". 
The plaintiffs' suit to overturn election results in six ridings was unsuccessful and the court ascribed no blame to RMG.


Four months later on April 8 2013, RMG announced it was closing its call centres and laying off call centre employees, and four days after that iMarketing Solutions and all its 18 Canadian and American subsidiaries filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada and the US.
At the time they owed the Canadian federal government $1 million in unpaid taxes.

CEO Andrew Langhorne was sanguine :

“The nature of our business often necessitates ramping work up and down based on business requirements.”

And sure enough the 42nd federal election has brought them out above ground once again, now known as IMKT Direct Solutions in Canada and iMarketing Acquisitions in New Mexico. They are currently posting ads to hire call centre workers across Canada and Andrew Langhorne is once again launching those phone banks for Voter Outreach Centre, the name registered in February 2011 and used by RMG in the previous election as well. 

Households across Canada from Ottawa to BC reported receiving their calls beginning in December.
Port Alberni municipal councillor Chris Alemany got a call on August 4 :

“Hi, this is the Voter Outreach Centre for Prime Minister Stephen Harper. We would like to know if we can count on your support for Stephen Harper in the upcoming election”

His wife picked up another call 11 days later :

"Hi, this is _name of person_ with the Voter Outreach Centre. We would like to know if we can count on your vote for Stephen Harper in the upcoming election."

Councillor Alemany : "Note the difference from my call? They didn’t specifically identify the Voter Outreach Centre as being a part of the Stephen Harper campaign."

A new script or a bit of free lancing on the part of the call centre employee?
Either way, they did mention Steve in there so it's all still legal.

Operators are standing by...

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Boycott the Royal Bank - Part 2

Shorter Gord Nixon : Look, they're not your jobs, they're our jobs, and if we choose to move our jobs offshore to another company without you because it's cheaper, that's just business. Besides, only one of the 13 dudes we brought in to RBC came under iGATE's temporary foreign worker application - the rest of them are house guests.

About that one iGATE dude : G&M : 

The federal government is investigating Royal Bank of Canada’s move to outsource technology jobs and reviewing paperwork submitted by its contractor to bring in temporary foreign workers. The probe centres on what the government sees as “apparent discrepancies” regarding RBC’s explanation of the events.
RBC came under fire on the weekend after allegations emerged that Canada’s largest bank contracted iGate Corp. to handle the outsourcing of certain technology jobs, and the firm was using temporary foreign workers to displace RBC technology staff. The bank denied those claims, and said it does not get involved in the hiring practices of the companies it hires. 

“An investigation is under way and Human Resources and Skills Development Canada officials are currently reviewing the labour market opinions submitted by iGate in great detail, based on apparent discrepancies between RBC’s public statement and information which has previously been provided to the government,” said Alyson Queen, a spokeswoman for Human Resources Minister Diane Finley. 

Meanwhile when CBC interviewed Diane Finley's parlsec Kellie Leitch about the bankster issue, Leitch went on and on and on about "very critical labour shortages in Canada". Way to entirely miss the effing point, Kellie. These people had jobs.

But it's not just RBC of course. Two minutes of statements from employees replaced by foreign workers at TD Canada Trust, Scotiabank, and RBC :



Yesterday CBC Go Public reporter Kathy Tomlinson, who broke the RBC offshoring in-and outsourcing jobs story, was on CBC BC Early Edition. She said she also heard the same stories from terminated employees at Bank of Montreal and CIBC. Excerpted transcript :

I'm getting emails from people who are management, that are high in this and who know how it works. It seems to me that the banks essentially have a template and these outsourcing companies have a template too - they know exactly how to present their case for bringing these workers in, and remember it's the outsourcing company that actually brings the workers in. They're the one that apply to the government for permission and they're the ones that get these workers the visas., right? 

But of course the banks are involved - they're a partnership. So it looks to me from what I'm hearing that there's a template that they've developed that's approved by the government." 

Anna Maria Tremonti's show today took on the larger issue of global outsourcing: 

The insourced foreign workers go home to do the work from their own countries where they are paid 50% of what the Canadians they replaced made.

We have had foreign temporary workers for over 40 years but since 2006 there's been an explosion of low skill temporary foreign workers who can stay here for up to four years and be paid 15% less. Not just low skill workers, this has now evolved to include engineers.

Armine Yalnizyan from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives : 

" Importing people to learn the skills so they can take the skills out - what kind of public policy is that? The Economic McAction Plan."

Alberta Federation of Labour, today, on guest worker permits provided by Human Resources and Skills Development Canada :

Between April 25 and December 18, 2012, more than 2,400 Accelerated Labour Market Opinion or ALMO guest-worker permits – which are supposed to be reserved for highly-skilled employment – have been granted to fast-food restaurants, convenience stores and gas stations. McDonalds, Tim Hortons, A&W, Subway Sandwiches. Are we supposed to believe that these are ‘high-skill’ employment opportunities? 

More than 54 per cent (2,640) of the ALMO approvals in the country were for Alberta-based employers.  ...  The list of businesses in Alberta who received ALMO approvals included 33 A&W restaurants. 

The ALMO stream, introduced in last year’s omnibus budget bill, is proving to be the latest evidence that the temporary foreign worker program is part of a low-wage agenda on the part of radical Tea-Party Tories.

How are young people supposed to compete for temporary low skill jobs to get the education they need in order to finally not be able to get the IT jobs they trained for because they've all gone offshore? Because the real news here is that good education and a relevant skill level is no longer enough to keep you off the unemployment line. 

Armine Yalnizan is right - this is terrible public policy on the government's part.

And finally, the Cons fundraiser/voter contact company, Xentel/RMG/iMarketing Solutions Group, announced yesterday that it is laying off its call centre workers. (h/t Holly Stick)

Will they be outsourcing those jobs offshore? I ask because the Conservative Party of Canada is currently trolling Creekside reading all the posts on Royal Bank and iMarketing Solutions/RMG.

Boycott the Royal Bank of Canada, Part 1

Boycott the Royal Bank - Part 3             Boycott the Royal Bank ... and Amanda Lang
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RoboCon : RMG and the US Right to Life Committee

--- updated below ---

In August 2004, three telemarketing companies - RMG (Responsive Marketing Group), Xentel DM, and Univision Marketing Group - jointly petitioned the Governor General to have not-for-profit organizations and their fundraisers exempted from certain CRTC regulations they felt were unfair to the success of their trade. Citing the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, "freedom of expression", and the "moral rights of authors" over their copyrighted telephone scripts, they objected to :

"the requirement that tele-canvassing service providers identify themselves, their organization, and their organization’s client right at the beginning of the call"

because, among othe reasons :

"if a recipient other than the intended recipient hears the name of a not- for-profit or a cause that he or she is not supportive of, there is a high likelihood that that not-for-profit is vetted before reaching the intended recipient. The not-for-profits most affected by this are those which represent views that society deems controversial or not mainstream, for example: gun control, women's rights, abortion, environmental issues, politics or religious issues."

Women's rights are controversial?

So given that RMG described itself in the brief as "providing direct marketing services to non-profit and political organizations across Canada and a relatively small number of North American corporations" and on its website as working "exclusively with right-of-centre campaigns", I googled up RMG and abortion.

NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE COMMITTEE, INC. of WASHINGTON, DC will be conducting a telephone solicitation campaign beginning November 23, 2009 and ending July 26, 2010. NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE COMMITTEE, INC. has hired RMG USA, INC. of TORONTO, ON, to conduct the campaign.  According to the fundraising contract filed with the State, NATIONAL RIGHT TO LIFE COMMITTEE, INC. will receive a minimum of 1 per cent of the gross funds raised from this solicitation. RMG USA, INC. will be required to file a financial report on the results of this solicitation campaign within 90 days after the end of the campaign.

Financial reports were duly filed in Washington, Colorado, Connecticut, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Washington, New Hampshire, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Ohio, California ... ok, all the states apparently.

Here's Colorado's in 2011 : 

That 1% to Charity is a bit of a misnomer as the contract signed by NRL Exec Director David N O'Steen and RMG's Andrew Langhorne states : "The main Agreement between RMG and Charity is not a percentage-based agreement ... and the language is provided only for the purposes of complying with the contract disclosure requirements of the states ..."  
Instead RMG USA was paid a fixed hourly fee to contact NRLC's house file of donors to recruit them as volunteers in a phone/mail/online pledge drive to enlarge the NRLC donor membership.

And that "USA" after RMG's name? RMG founder Michael M Davis incorporated RMG USA, Inc. in Ontario in March 2008 under RMG's then 1235 Bay Street address. 

Coincidentally, there is another unrelated telemarketing/data-mining company based in Richmond Virginia called Response Marketing Group (rmg-usa.com) who once had an office in Toronto many years ago called Interactive Marketing Group .

Update : It's a small small small telemarketing world.
Steven Hubley, founder of Univision Marketing mentioned at the top of the post, later became RMG's VP of Business Development. From his bio at left bank international where he is a partner :

"Founded in 1988, RMG has been a leader in high quality, high response telefundraising. RMG merged with Xentel in 2010 and their fundraising division, [is] now known as Engage Interactive " 

RMG's parent organization iMarketing Solutions Group lists Engage Interactive as a subsidiary.
Engage Interactive President Marianne Mulders is RMG's President of Non-Profit and Relationship Management, and was formerly listed as President of RMG USA.
Len Wolstenholme, spokesperson  for Xentel for over 20 years and now Chief Compliance Officer of iMmarketing Solutions Group, is listed on Engage Interactive's Meet the Management page.

In August 2012, Xentel advised the West Virginia Sec. of State's office that its new head office address was at 700 W. Virginia Street, Suite 700, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This is the same address as the US office for both Engage Interactive and another iMarketing Solutions Group subsidiary - Target Outreach : 

"For the past 15 years the principals of Target Outreach have helped Republicans win."  

Xentel's Sept. 2012 Renewal of Charity Registration at the US Sec. of State lists David Winograd of Mequon Wisconsin as President of Xentel. Winograd is also President of iMarketing Solutions.
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RoboCon: RMG/Xentel/iMarketing Solutions revisited

Earlier this year the Cons' principal voter contact company Responsive Marketing Group came under heavy media scrutiny for

•  its role as a partner in the Cons' CIMS data collection on Canadian voters used by 97 Con candidate campaigns in the last election,
• allegations made by at least one former RMG call centre employee that their scripts were directing voters to the wrong polling stations, 
• aggressive fundraising tactics for the Cons with pensioners, and
• its merger with Xentel.

In March RMG put out a press release protesting the unfairness of being smeared by its association with Xentel, a company with a dodgy  robo/live call   history in both Canada and the US, that RMG had "acquired" two years earlier.
McMaher :

The company now operates under the umbrella of iMarketing Solutions Group. During the election campaign in the spring of 2011, the merged company was run by co-CEOs Michael Davis, formerly of RMG, and Michael Platz, formerly of Xentel 

As I wrote at the time, what was less clear was which company had acquired the other, with most news reports, like Bloomberg's Business Week for example, describing RMG as "a subsidiary of Xentel" and iMarketing Solutions as an "alternate name of Xentel".

Three weeks ago, iMarketing Solutions Group published its Canadian Stock Exchange Listing.
In the following excerpts, iMS is "The Company".

"On October 28, 2010, the shareholders of the Company approved a name change of the Company to iMarketing Solutions Group Inc. from Xentel DM Incorporated (“Xentel”) as an initial step in rebranding and reorganizing the operations. 

The Company merged with RMG on March 3, 2010. 

On behalf of political clients, the Company conducts direct tele-service contact with potential voters to assist in the assessment and evaluation of political and consumer attitudes.
The Company continues the practice of subcontracting some of its work.  This is done on a strategically selective basis where the subcontractor has superior data in a specific area and/or can execute the work on a more economical basis.    

Marketing List Rentals : The Company rents selected proprietary databases to not-for-profit organizations where they do not compete with our normal business activities. These databases are developed through our normal course of business. 

Re the CRTC's Do Not Call Lists, operated by Bell Canada :

A number of exemptions were made in the DNCL due to efforts of the Company and a group of diverse stakeholders. The following types of calls are exempt from using the DNCL:

(a) calls made by or for registered political campaigns, associations, candidates or persons seeking a political nomination,
(b) calls made to parties with whom the caller has an existing business relationship,
(c) calls made by or on behalf of a registered charity
(d) calls made for market research purposes

Throughout the report are numerous allusions to financial hardship with "substantial doubt that the Company will be able to continue as a going concern" without "access to additional financing".
Equipment purchases of $1,839,000 and $1,453,000 in 2010 and 2011 were "related mostly to the ongoing update of the Company’s dialing platform and information technologies".
The principals are making out ok though, with compensation packages of well over $½ million each  for Chairman Platz and President Winograd for 2010, not including their directors' fees.

David A. Winograd in Wisconsin was President of US operations of Xentel DM since 2003 - now President of iMarketing Solutions.
Michael Platz, Chairman, CEO, and "founder of the predecessor company Xentel", served as Co-Chief Executive Officer of iMS til Sept 2011 and Chairman til Jan. 2012. Now just a iMS director.
Andrew Langhorne, Mike Harris Voter Contact Director for 7 years and COO of RMG since Nov. 2006, now COO for iMS. 
Michael M. Davis, founder of RMG, is "Managing Director, Political"
Listed among iMS's 20 subsidiary companies like RMG and Xentel Inc - half of them Canadian and half US - is Stewart Braddick's Target Outreach for Republican campaigns.

Back in 2005, Sean Holman at Public Eye Online reported on a heavily loaded Xentel telemarketing poll leading up to the Vancouver civic elections. Their questions :

Number One: "The Vancouver Sun today says that the campaign is getting dirty and scare tactics are starting to fly. Does this make you more or less likely to vote?"  

Two: "It says in the Sun that Jim Green left COPE in tatters and with a great big debt. Does this make you more or less likely to vote?"  

And three: "Both Sam Sullivan and Jim Green are accusing each other of dirty tricks and negative campaigning. Does this make you more or less likely to vote?"

Xentel has merged with the Cons #1 voter marketing firm - working, as RMG puts it, "exclusively with right-of-centre campaigns ".  Does this make you more or less likely to vote?
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RoboCon : Margin of Victory Voter Fraud

As a follow up to my earlier chart showing Steve's Margin of Victory in ridings with the closest vote margins, I've adjusted it to include only the seven being contested in Federal Court for voter fraud and added two columns of polling data from an EKOS research paper based on a recent phone survey of 4,797 voters. It compares 106 ridings where there were no reports of suspicious activity to the seven ridings where there was a lot - election phone calls made to voters to identify who they intended to vote for followed up by a call falsely telling them their polling station had moved.
Only one of them - Vancouver Island North - had an actual polling station change.

So according to the Ekos poll, if you lived in Winnipeg South Centre, for example, where the Cons took the riding by only 1.8% of the vote, you had a 71% chance of getting a phone call asking you who you were going to vote for. And if you subsequently got a follow-up call regarding polling stations, you had a 30% chance of being told your polling station had changed even though it hadn't.

If however you lived in one of the 106 other ridings used as a control group, you had a 44 % chance of being asked your voting intention and only a 14.7% chance of later being given false polling station info.

From Council of Canadians, who commissioned the EKOS poll and are supporting the court actions :

Other key findings across all seven ridings:

• 16.9% of eligible voters received calls related to polling stations. Of those, 22.3% were told of polling station location changes (amounting to 3.77% of eligible voters).
• Of those who were told of polling station changes, the voter intentions were as follows: Liberals 32.6%, Greens 28%, NDP 25.6%, and Conservatives 10%.
• 42.5% of eligible voters who received calls related to polling stations had a call claiming to be from Elections Canada.

And I can already feel a chilly if friendly wind blowing from the infinitely more rigorous Alice Funke at Pundits' Guide who would never mix up apples and hand grenades like this in the same chart - adding a polling sample onto Elections Canada Official Voting Results.
But if the EKOS poll is accurate, then up to 15% of the vote in those seven closest vote margin ridings -some 50,000 people - received phone calls deliberately intended to suppress the non-Steve vote.


Here's one to a couple in Nipissing-Timiskaming - margin of victory : 18 votes.

During the campaign, Hearst received a voter-identification call from the Conservatives, to which she responded negatively. On election day, after he had voted, Ferance, 66, received a call from a 647 area code — in Toronto — that claimed to be from Elections Canada, telling him that his polling station had moved to a location about 20 kilometres away. 

"I said to him you're obviously a government employee, because that information is totally wrong," said Ferance. "It's wrong because A, I just voted, B, I live next door to the voting station, and C, I can still see people coming and going."

From the sworn affidavit of former RMG employee Annette Desgagne to the Federal Court of Canada :

"17. I also specifically recall that I made Change of Address Calls and talked to people in the riding of Nipissing-Timiskaming about changes of address for their polling stations because I could not pronounce the word "Timiskaming" and had to find out how to say it properly."

Margin of victory riding data from Elections Canada Official Voting Results Table 12.
Last two columns in chart taken from data in EKOS Study

OK-now-you're-just-screwing-with-our-heads update : 
PM's mail room may have shredded historical documents 
Why? Because the mail room was so swamped 3 days after the last election
Oh ---oopsy, a shredding incident.
Did the historical documents come from the Historica-Dominion Institute by any chance?
And Jesus Rose Mary Woods and Joseph, I'll bet even employees at friggin Dairy Queen have to initial registered mail packages they receive.
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The life of a RoboCon is always intense

Responsive Marketing Group (RMG) - the telemarketing company credited with building CIMS, the Cons' voter database on Canadian citizens used by 97 Con MPs in the last election - is some hacked off with having its reputation slandered due to its 'acquisition' of Xentel DM, a cross-border telemaketing fundraiser which comes with a long trail of sorry ass news baggage.

The Responsive Marketing Group Inc.('RMG')'s proud, 21-year reputation for providing voter contact services has come under increasing attack through speculative media reports and accusations in Parliament that are without basis in fact. ...  Liberal and NDP MPs have taken to knowingly and deliberately misrepresenting RMG's business practices in the House of Commons, by tying past practices of a company that RMG acquired two years ago - Xentel DM Inc., to our current operations, despite the fact that the very issues they refer to occurred before RMG's acquisition of Xentel.

 Since our acquisition of Xentel, we have instituted a wholesale reorganization at the company:

• The management team at Xentel was replaced.

• New systems, processes and quality control measures were instituted to bring it in-line with RMG's practices.

• RMG continues to operate as an independent firm.

Ok, let's look at those claims one at a time.

1. I confess I'm a bit confused about the merged RMG/Xentel joint management team during the last election and whether RMG acquired Xentel or the other way around.

McMaher : Call centre used aggressive sales pitch to raise money for Tories

RMG merged in 2010 with Xentel DM, a Calgary-based telemarketing firm that worked primarily for charities in the United States. The company now operates under the umbrella of iMarketing Solutions Group. ... During the election campaign in the spring of 2011, the merged company was run by co-CEOs Michael Davis, formerly of RMG, and Michael Platz, formerly of Xentel. 

And is Linked In at all reliable? Because it lists David Winograd - "Greater Milwaukee Area" - as "President of Xentel : Currently holds this position" and "President of IMarketing Solutions Group : March 2010 – Present (2 years 2 months)". 

More joint management news from Bloomberg BusinessWeek : 

"Mr. Michael P. Platz served as a Co-Chief Executive Officer of iMarketing Solutions Group Inc. (alternate name: Xentel DM Inc.) until September 6, 2011 and previously served as its President. Mr. Platz also served as Chief Executive Officer of Xentel DM Inc."

Target Outreach, RMG's brand for its US operations based in Washington DC, Ft.Lauderdale, and Milwaukee, also lists Michael Platz as President. 

From Business Week's Company Overview of The Responsive Marketing Group Inc.

"The Responsive Marketing Group Inc. designs and executes integrated programs that use direct mail, the telephone, and online tools. The company is headquartered in Toronto, Canada with office operations in Washington D.C. As of March 3, 2010, The Responsive Marketing Group Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Xentel DM Inc".

Right, so now I have no idea who owns who here.

2. New systems and quality control.
So what's up with Xentel? Well, lots in the US, but here's one in Canada:

Five years ago The Star did a story on fundraising consultant Craig Copland and six Canadian charities he founded and ran out of a post office box belonging to Xentel.:

Copland finds Xentel new charity clients. Xentel pays him royalties for charities sent its way. He also served on Xentel's board of directors until the Star started asking questions.  

Here's the update on that one from a year ago :
Plug pulled on charity after audit reveals money misspent  March 7, 2011 :

An organ donation charity that made emotional pleas to Canadians to help save lives has been shut down after federal auditors found most of the money collected went to fundraising and administrative fees. 
This is the second charity Copland helped found that has been shut down by the Canada Revenue Agency in the last two years. A third charity, which paid a Copland-run company nearly $900,000, was shut down last month.

Auditors also said the Emergency Foundation paid more than $4.5 million to telemarketer Xentel and another firm while listing payments of only $1.9 million to charity programs.

 Xentel carries a reputation in North America for aggressive pitches.

"Xentel spokesperson Len Wolstenholme said his company prefers to avoid costly U.S. legal battles and when necessary settles the case, admits no guilt and pays a fine."

Leonard Wolstenholme is Chief Compliance Officer of IMarketing Solutions Group Inc

3. Independence.

At the bottom of Con MP Laurie Hawn's telemarketing services contract with RMG for the last election - underneath the bit about "developing scripts and background materials in consultation with the client", the "attempted collection of email addresses", and "data transfer in CIMS format" - is the following note about confidentiality :

"The CAMPAIGN's lists shall be confidential and RMG (including its related and affiliated companies) shall not directly or indirectly, knowingly disclose this data to or for the benefit of any person, firm, corporation, association, business or governmental or private agency of any kind whatsoever or wherever situated, other than the CAMPAIGN and the Conservative Party of Canada."

So does RMG ( including its related and affiliated companies) own the data on Canadians? 
Do they store it in Canada? 

Dec 21, 2012 Update : RoboCon : RMG/Xentel/iMarketing Solutions revisited
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Today's RoboCon news :
Former call centre worker files affidavit over election calls

McMaher: The Con Party and RMG reject former RMG call centre employee Annette Desgagne's sworn affidavit that phone workers misdirected voters.

CBC : 6 robocall ridings had no polling changes

Update : POGGE : Is this really the story you want to go with?
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