Trouble in Toryland: their Dirty Tricks catalogue
Posted on Mon, Feb 27, 2012, 5:04 am by Lawrence Martin Email
Lawrence Martin is the author of 10 books, including six national bestsellers. His most recent, Harperland, was nominated for the Shaughnessy Cohen award. His other works include two volumes on Jean Chrétien, two on Canada-U.S. relations and three books on hockey.
The Conservatives have been caught up in many shady activities since coming to power. The revelation that they may have been behind a robocall operation to suppress voting for opposition parties would rank, if proven, among the more serious offences.
Stephen Harper has denied involvement in the scam in which operatives acted under the guise of Elections Canada officials. Coincidentally, another controversy, the in-and-out affair, involved Elections Canada. Some of Harper’s most senior officials took part in that operation.
In giving or not giving the benefit of the doubt on matters like these, the question of the track record figures prominently. To the misfortune of Team Harper, its record on duplicitous activities is hardly one to inspire confidence that its hand are clean.
There follows a list – is Harperland becoming Nixonland? — of dirty tricks, black ops and hardball tactics from the Conservatives’ years in power.
1. Cooking the Books
The duplicity began in the election that brought the Conservatives to power – the 2006 campaign in which they were promising a new era of transparency and accountability. Via some peculiar accounting practices, the Tories exceeded spending limits in the campaign, providing themselves with an advertising advantage in key ridings. They were later caught, had their offices raided by police and ultimately pled guilty last year to reduced charges of violating financing provisions of the Elections Act.
2. The Hidden Slush Fund
More than $40-million slated for border-infrastructure improvements instead went into enhancement projects in Tony Clement’s riding in preparation for the G-8 summit. To conceal the intent of the spending from legislators, John Baird used the border fund as a “delivery mechanism” for the money.
3. Falsifying Documents
The document-altering scam involving Bev Oda’s office and the aid group Kairos is only one of several instances in which the Tories have been caught document-tampering. They went so far as to alter a report by Auditor General Sheila Fraser to make it look like she was crediting them with prudent financial management when, in fact, it was the Liberals to whom she was referring.
4. Shutting Down Detainees’ Probes
The Conservatives employed a number of authoritarian tactics to avoid culpability on the Afghan detainees’ file. They included an attack on the reputation of diplomat Richard Colvin, the shutting down of Parliament and the disabling of Peter Tinsley’s Military Police Complaints Commission. The Tories denied Tinsley’s commission documents for reasons of national security – even though commission members had national security clearance.
5. The Cotler Misinformation Campaign
In an act described by the Speaker of the Commons, himself a Tory, as reprehensible, Conservatives systematically spread rumours in Irwin Cotler’s Montreal riding that he was stepping down.
6. The Suppression of Damaging Reports
A report of the Commissioner of Firearms that showed the gun registry in a good light was kept hidden by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan beyond its statutory release deadline. As a consequence, the report escaped the eyes of opposition members before a vote on the registry was taken. It is one of many instances in which the government has suppressed research that runs counter to its ideology.
7. Attempt to Frame the Opposition Leader.
Late in the 2011 election camapign, a senior Conservative operative leaked bogus photos to Sun Media in an attempt to frame Michael Ignatieff as an Iraqi war planner.
8. Communications Lockdown.
The government went to unprecedented lengths to vet, censor and withhold information. After denying legislators information on costs of programs, Harper became the first prime minister in history to be found in contempt of Parliament. The public service has muzzled like never before. Last week, several groups wrote Harper urging him to stop gagging the science community on the question of climate change and other issues. The Tories denied an opposition member accreditation to attend the Durban summit on climate change then lambasted the member for not being there. Journalists have faced myriad restrictions. At one point in the in-and-out affair, PMO officials fled down a hotel fire-escape stairwell, Keystone-Kops style, to avoid the media. On another, the governing party had the police clear a Charlottetown hotel lobby of scribes wishing to cover a Tory caucus meeting.
9. Intimidation and Bullying of Adversaries
The list of smear campaigns against opponents is long. Some that come to mind are Harper’s trying to link Liberal Navdeep Bains to terrorism; Vic Toews’ labelling of distinguished jurist Louise Arbour a “disgrace to Canada” for her views on the Middle East; seeking reprisals against University of Ottawa academic Michael Behiels for being critical of the government; and the dismissal of Nuclear Safety Commission boss Linda Keen who the PM decried as having a Liberal background.
10. The “Citizenship” Dog and Pony Show
As well as being muzzled, civil servants have been put to use for the government’s political benefit. In one such case, the immigration department ordered bureaucrats to act as stand-ins at a fake citizenship reaffirmation ceremony broadcast by Sun TV.
11. Writing the Book on Disrupting Committees
The Tories quietly issued their committee chairpersons a 200-page handbook on how to obstruct the opposition. The handbook recommended barring witnesses who might have embarrassing information. It went so far as to instruct chairpersons to shut down the committees if the going got really tough. The Tories have also issued an order that frees cabinet staffers from ever having to testify before committees. They are resorting more frequently to in-camera committee sessions, away from the public and media eye.
12. Leaking Veterans’ Medical Files
Colonel Pat Stogran, who was dropped as Veterans’ ombudsman after making waves, says he became the target of anonymous defamatory emails and other dirty tricks after criticizing the government. Other veterans, Sean Bruyea and Dennis Manuge, say their medical files have been leaked, going all the way back to 2002, in an attempt to embarrass them.
13. Unfixing The Fixed-Date Election Law
The prime minister brought in a fixed date election law which, he said, would remove the governing party’s timing advantage in dropping the writ. He promptly turned around and, earning Jack Layton’s lasting disdain, ignored his own law and issued a surprise election call in 2008.
14. Declaring Brian Mulroney Persona Non Grata
In the wake of the Karlheinz Schreiber cash hand-out controversy, Harper’s team, in its zest to disassociate itself, went so far as to put out the false rumour that Mulroney, who won two majorities for the party, was no longer a card-carrying member.
15. Unreleasing Released Documents
The Conservatives have resorted to the use of shady tactics to de-access the Access to Information system. In one notable instance cabinet staffer Sebastien Togneri ordered officials to unrelease documents that were on their way to the media. Freedom of information specialist Stanley Tromp has catalogued some 46 examples of the government’s shielding and stonewalling.
16. Ejecting Citizens From Rallies
Operatives hauled voters out of Harper rallies in last year’s campaign for the simple reason that they had marginal ties to other parties. The PM was compelled to apologize.
17. Hit Squad On Journalists
Operating under phony email IDs, Conservative staffers have attacked journalists in thousands of online posts in an attempt to discredit them and their work.
18. Dirty Work on Dion
The Conservatives have set records for the use of personal attack ads. In the 2008 campaign they ran an on-line ad which depicted a bird defecating on Stephane Dion’s head. Protests compelled them to withdraw it.
19. Tory Logos on Taxpayer Cheques
The economic recovery program was paid for by taxpayer dollars but the Tories tried to make political gains by putting their party logo – until they were called on it – on billboard-sized cheques. Surveys by journalists showed the money was distributed disproportionately to Conservative ridings and partisans.
20. The Rob Anders Nomination Crackdown
The prime minister has been accused of turning his own party into an echo chamber. When someone tried to exercise her democratic right to challenge Harper loyalist Rob Anders for the nomination in his Calgary riding, Harper’s men descended like a black ops commando unit, seized control of the office, seized control of the riding executive and crushed the bid.
21. The Rights and Democracy Takeover
Groups like Rights and Democracy supposedly operate at arm’s length from the government. But the Harperites, in what journalists described as boardroom terror, removed or suspended board members and stacked the board with pro-Israeli hardliners. As part of the ethical anarchy, a break-in occurred at headquarters.
22. Vote Suppression Tactics
Along with the accusation of pre-recorded robocalls sending voters astray in last election, reports of several other Tory vote suppression tactics have surfaced. They include a systematic live-caller operation in which Liberal supporters were peppered with bogus information.
The list does not include such controversies asthe Cadman affair in which the Conservatives allegedly tried to bribe independent MP Chuck Cadman for his vote; the whitewashing by Integrity Commissioner Christiane Ouimet of 227 whistleblower complaints against the government; the allegation by eyewitness Elizabeth May that Harper cheated in the 2008 election’s televised debates by bringing in notes; and many others.
Friday, March 2, 2012
The curious case of Saanich-Gulf Islands 1 March 2012
LAWRENCE MARTIN
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Mar. 01, 2012 2:00AM EST
The robo-call jury is still out. The story might be overblown. It’s not Robogate unless more evidence is forthcoming.
What fuels suspicion, however, is the trend line of controversial actions and allegations of dirty tricks by this government. That’s why it’s not so easy to believe Conservative protests of innocence in the robo-calling scandal. In the House of Commons on Wednesday, Stephen Harper, a hands-on prime minister with a history of warring with Elections Canada, dismissed the affair as “a smear campaign” by sore losers.
More related to this story
•Harper dismisses robo-call scandal as ‘smear campaign’ by sore losers
•Tories using Vikileaks to deflect heat from robo-calls, Rae warns
•The ‘freedom’ show on the Rideau
Photos
Adrift To cast a bit of light, let’s go back to the 2008 election in the closely contested B.C. riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands. The incumbent was the apple-cheeked Conservative Gary Lunn. Midway through that campaign, Julian West, the NDP candidate, dropped out owing to revelations of a public nudity scandal from years earlier. But his withdrawal didn’t come in time to get his name off the ballot.
The federal election was on Oct. 14. At dinnertime on Oct. 13, an automated phone message went out urging constituents, strangely enough, to vote for Mr. West. And it appeared to have some effect: He received 3,667 votes, almost 6 per cent of the total. A poll a few days earlier had showed him at 1 per cent. This was good news for Mr. Lunn. The bulk of those votes might otherwise have gone to the Liberal candidate, who lost to Mr. Lunn by 2,625 votes.
When news of the election-eve robo-calling surfaced, Liberals were naturally suspicious of the Conservatives. Who else could have been the source of the automated calls? The Liberals or Greens wouldn’t have wanted anyone to vote for the NDP, because it would have split the vote. As for the NDP, why would it make a last-minute push for a candidate who had resigned?
In an interview this week, Byng Giraud, the Lunn campaign manager, denied any involvement with an automated-call operation. Maybe the NDP had been behind it, he speculated, because of the per vote subsidy that each party received under the rules back then. But even if spoiled ballots were counted for the subsidy, the expense of a robo-call operation would likely have been higher.
After the election, Elections Canada took what Liberals viewed as a cursory look at the matter and was unable to determine the source of the calls. Will Horter, who was from the group Conservation Voters of B.C., which was very active in the campaign, heard that Elections Canada and Telus couldn’t identify the source because the robo-calls were made from the United States. He put out a blog titled Karl Rove Comes to Canada? Today, we see media reports suggesting that some of the robo-call tracks lead to U.S sourcing.
Mr. Horter, having organized some robo-calling himself on environmental issues, is well familiar with them. They’re expensive and they require a target list, a voter I.D. list, a call centre and a lot of expertise. The Conservatives, he said, had the most sophisticated voter identification operation in the country.
Mr. Giraud, the Lunn campaign manager, was categorical: “Nobody has ever asked me to do dirty tricks.” But it’s conceivable they were done without his knowledge. The party had a separate team, he said, that worked on swing ridings. It’s also possible the Conservatives weren’t the source at all.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May now represents Saanich-Gulf Islands. She and Mr. Horter and others are given to wonder whether the riding was a robo-call pilot project. Mr. Harper said on Wednesday there was no project, never mind pilot.
From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Thursday, Mar. 01, 2012 2:00AM EST
The robo-call jury is still out. The story might be overblown. It’s not Robogate unless more evidence is forthcoming.
What fuels suspicion, however, is the trend line of controversial actions and allegations of dirty tricks by this government. That’s why it’s not so easy to believe Conservative protests of innocence in the robo-calling scandal. In the House of Commons on Wednesday, Stephen Harper, a hands-on prime minister with a history of warring with Elections Canada, dismissed the affair as “a smear campaign” by sore losers.
More related to this story
•Harper dismisses robo-call scandal as ‘smear campaign’ by sore losers
•Tories using Vikileaks to deflect heat from robo-calls, Rae warns
•The ‘freedom’ show on the Rideau
Photos
Adrift To cast a bit of light, let’s go back to the 2008 election in the closely contested B.C. riding of Saanich-Gulf Islands. The incumbent was the apple-cheeked Conservative Gary Lunn. Midway through that campaign, Julian West, the NDP candidate, dropped out owing to revelations of a public nudity scandal from years earlier. But his withdrawal didn’t come in time to get his name off the ballot.
The federal election was on Oct. 14. At dinnertime on Oct. 13, an automated phone message went out urging constituents, strangely enough, to vote for Mr. West. And it appeared to have some effect: He received 3,667 votes, almost 6 per cent of the total. A poll a few days earlier had showed him at 1 per cent. This was good news for Mr. Lunn. The bulk of those votes might otherwise have gone to the Liberal candidate, who lost to Mr. Lunn by 2,625 votes.
When news of the election-eve robo-calling surfaced, Liberals were naturally suspicious of the Conservatives. Who else could have been the source of the automated calls? The Liberals or Greens wouldn’t have wanted anyone to vote for the NDP, because it would have split the vote. As for the NDP, why would it make a last-minute push for a candidate who had resigned?
In an interview this week, Byng Giraud, the Lunn campaign manager, denied any involvement with an automated-call operation. Maybe the NDP had been behind it, he speculated, because of the per vote subsidy that each party received under the rules back then. But even if spoiled ballots were counted for the subsidy, the expense of a robo-call operation would likely have been higher.
After the election, Elections Canada took what Liberals viewed as a cursory look at the matter and was unable to determine the source of the calls. Will Horter, who was from the group Conservation Voters of B.C., which was very active in the campaign, heard that Elections Canada and Telus couldn’t identify the source because the robo-calls were made from the United States. He put out a blog titled Karl Rove Comes to Canada? Today, we see media reports suggesting that some of the robo-call tracks lead to U.S sourcing.
Mr. Horter, having organized some robo-calling himself on environmental issues, is well familiar with them. They’re expensive and they require a target list, a voter I.D. list, a call centre and a lot of expertise. The Conservatives, he said, had the most sophisticated voter identification operation in the country.
Mr. Giraud, the Lunn campaign manager, was categorical: “Nobody has ever asked me to do dirty tricks.” But it’s conceivable they were done without his knowledge. The party had a separate team, he said, that worked on swing ridings. It’s also possible the Conservatives weren’t the source at all.
Green Party Leader Elizabeth May now represents Saanich-Gulf Islands. She and Mr. Horter and others are given to wonder whether the riding was a robo-call pilot project. Mr. Harper said on Wednesday there was no project, never mind pilot.
Exactly how dangerous is Stephen Harper? 2 March 2012
gerald caplan
Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 4:39PM EST
Last updated Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 5:24PM EST
comments Email 11Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Robo-gate, considered by many to be a concerted (if so far unproven) assault on democracy, has opened wide the simmering debate about Stephen Harper and his cronies. Are they reformers or revolutionaries? Are they simply a somewhat more ambitious form of the conservatism Canadians have known since John A., just a further notch or three along the traditional Canadian ideological continuum?
More related to this story
•Tories lose control of agenda as they try to ride out robo-call storm
•Liberals build their case in robo-call scandal as Tory attack backfires
•Elections Canada faces 31,000 complaints in robo-call probe
Video
Democracy the loser in robo-call affair
Interactive
Map: Which ridings were hit with robo-call allegations?
Video
More than 31,000 robo-call complaints made Or do they represent a radical transformation, an extreme new form of conservatism that had, until now, been relegated to the lunatic fringe of Canadian political culture? It’s hardly an academic question. You could even say that he future of Canada depends on the answer.
I don’t mean to be disingenuous here. Of course many partisans have already answered this question to their own satisfaction; that includes me, as faithful readers well know. Ever since it was formed from the American-style populist Reform Party and the dead ashes of the Progressive Conservative Party, and with a pugnaciously hard-right Stephen Harper as its leader, the usual suspects have demonized the new Conservative Party as beyond the pale.
Liberals and New Democrats insisted Mr. Harper's baby was a new and unwelcome species, one that was determined to shatter the vague but real consensus that had ruled Canada for so long. For the truth has long been that even while New Democrats had great fun and won some points portraying the PCs and Grits as the entirely interchangeable “old parties,” Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Visa and MasterCard, the NDP too played within certain very broad Canadian parameters.
Of course there were always real differences on a wide array of key policy matters. But on fundamental ethical and process questions, there was crucial agreement, with all parties accepting that real democracy meant accepting certain constraints on their political practices. It’s not always an easy distinction to make, but it can be seen as the difference between hardball and barely legal dirty tricks, between toughness and take-no-prisoners. It’s the dangerous mindset of the type who say – and believe – those not with us are communists/terrorists/child molesters/pornographers. As political scientist Alan Whitehorn has couched it, it’s the difference between “civil rivalry between fellow citizens of the same state [and] all-out extended war to destroy and obliterate the enemy”.
Again, I don’t want to give the false impression that there weren’t real divergences, real animosities, real bitterness. On occasion, the consensus was entirely breached, as when Pierre Trudeau recklessly invoked the War Measures Act – a moment that will forever scar his reputation.
But on the whole there was an underlying civility, a belief that one’s opponents (not enemies) were not going to change the rules of the game – though they might stretch them a fair bit. Signs might be torn down, street people might suddenly turn up at conventions as rabid partisans (though that was largely an inter-mural sport), a deceased chap might occasionally present himself at the ballot box. Nasty insults were exchanged, Question Period was often a zoo. An aberrant American-style Progressive Conservative or Liberal brawler would occasionally threaten the consensus. Nevertheless, there was an overall sense of playing the same democratic game, of getting a kick out of the game, of matching wits with opponents, of some of them even being worthy.
Mr. Harper’s Conservatives, many of us fear, have changed the entire game. In fact for them it’s not a game at all. Like their cherished American Republican role models, when they speak about their war room, they mean it. And in war, it hardly needs saying, there’s little tolerance for democratic niceties.
Enlarge this imageComment
Exactly how dangerous is Stephen Harper?
gerald caplan
Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 4:39PM EST
Last updated Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 5:24PM EST
comments Email 11Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Do I exaggerate? Listen once again to Tom Flanagan, former Harper strategist and a powerful voice still among conservatives and Conservatives. A Globe piece by Mr. Flanagan before the 2011 election was actually titled “An election is war by other means,” while earlier he had compared the 2008 campaign to ancient wars in which Rome (the Conservatives) defeated Carthage (the Liberals) and “razed the city to the ground and sowed salt in the fields so nothing would grow there again.” This is crazy talk.
The University of Ottawa’s Ralph Heintzman sums up this Harper credo: There is a “lack of sense of inner self-restraint on the part of the Prime Minister, a sense that it is some kind of war and therefore anything is legitimate, that it's quite acceptable for a prime minister to lie, for example, about how our parliamentary democracy works.”
It’s within this context that Robo-gate should be viewed.
Would a party that believed in politics as war hesitate to use the latest technology to keep opponents – the enemy! – from voting? Would a party that has already systematically undermined many traditional parliamentary and democratic niceties, as The Globe’s Lawrence Martin has repeatedly documented, hesitate to violate accepted democratic limits? Does a party that has already been found guilty of violating the election laws and that deliberately attempted to destabilize a sitting Liberal MP deserve the benefit of the doubt?
Here’s the problem. Both sides know with certainty the answer to these questions. Those of us who wouldn’t trust Stephen Harper if he told us today was Friday have no doubt who organized Robo-gate. In fact, I’m informed by a former Conservative operative familiar with both the party and technology that there’s far more to be revealed in this saga. This is said specifically to involve close ties between the Harperites and American Republicans who have been constructing a terrifying, full-blown voter suppression machine, as The Nation magazine, among others, has well documented and CBC Radio’s The Current has noted. I have no idea if this will be found to be true, but based on the record, it is surely not implausible.
Yet Mr. Harper's faithful base, that slightly-more-than-one-third of the electorate on whose behalf the entire government of Canada operates, knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is some kind of vicious Liberal frame-up and that their man is as innocent and pure as the driven white snow we occasionally still get.
Both sides can’t be right here. Let’s all pray mine is wrong.
Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 4:39PM EST
Last updated Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 5:24PM EST
comments Email 11Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Robo-gate, considered by many to be a concerted (if so far unproven) assault on democracy, has opened wide the simmering debate about Stephen Harper and his cronies. Are they reformers or revolutionaries? Are they simply a somewhat more ambitious form of the conservatism Canadians have known since John A., just a further notch or three along the traditional Canadian ideological continuum?
More related to this story
•Tories lose control of agenda as they try to ride out robo-call storm
•Liberals build their case in robo-call scandal as Tory attack backfires
•Elections Canada faces 31,000 complaints in robo-call probe
Video
Democracy the loser in robo-call affair
Interactive
Map: Which ridings were hit with robo-call allegations?
Video
More than 31,000 robo-call complaints made Or do they represent a radical transformation, an extreme new form of conservatism that had, until now, been relegated to the lunatic fringe of Canadian political culture? It’s hardly an academic question. You could even say that he future of Canada depends on the answer.
I don’t mean to be disingenuous here. Of course many partisans have already answered this question to their own satisfaction; that includes me, as faithful readers well know. Ever since it was formed from the American-style populist Reform Party and the dead ashes of the Progressive Conservative Party, and with a pugnaciously hard-right Stephen Harper as its leader, the usual suspects have demonized the new Conservative Party as beyond the pale.
Liberals and New Democrats insisted Mr. Harper's baby was a new and unwelcome species, one that was determined to shatter the vague but real consensus that had ruled Canada for so long. For the truth has long been that even while New Democrats had great fun and won some points portraying the PCs and Grits as the entirely interchangeable “old parties,” Tweedledum and Tweedledee, Visa and MasterCard, the NDP too played within certain very broad Canadian parameters.
Of course there were always real differences on a wide array of key policy matters. But on fundamental ethical and process questions, there was crucial agreement, with all parties accepting that real democracy meant accepting certain constraints on their political practices. It’s not always an easy distinction to make, but it can be seen as the difference between hardball and barely legal dirty tricks, between toughness and take-no-prisoners. It’s the dangerous mindset of the type who say – and believe – those not with us are communists/terrorists/child molesters/pornographers. As political scientist Alan Whitehorn has couched it, it’s the difference between “civil rivalry between fellow citizens of the same state [and] all-out extended war to destroy and obliterate the enemy”.
Again, I don’t want to give the false impression that there weren’t real divergences, real animosities, real bitterness. On occasion, the consensus was entirely breached, as when Pierre Trudeau recklessly invoked the War Measures Act – a moment that will forever scar his reputation.
But on the whole there was an underlying civility, a belief that one’s opponents (not enemies) were not going to change the rules of the game – though they might stretch them a fair bit. Signs might be torn down, street people might suddenly turn up at conventions as rabid partisans (though that was largely an inter-mural sport), a deceased chap might occasionally present himself at the ballot box. Nasty insults were exchanged, Question Period was often a zoo. An aberrant American-style Progressive Conservative or Liberal brawler would occasionally threaten the consensus. Nevertheless, there was an overall sense of playing the same democratic game, of getting a kick out of the game, of matching wits with opponents, of some of them even being worthy.
Mr. Harper’s Conservatives, many of us fear, have changed the entire game. In fact for them it’s not a game at all. Like their cherished American Republican role models, when they speak about their war room, they mean it. And in war, it hardly needs saying, there’s little tolerance for democratic niceties.
Enlarge this imageComment
Exactly how dangerous is Stephen Harper?
gerald caplan
Globe and Mail Update
Published Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 4:39PM EST
Last updated Friday, Mar. 02, 2012 5:24PM EST
comments Email 11Print Decrease text size
Increase text size Do I exaggerate? Listen once again to Tom Flanagan, former Harper strategist and a powerful voice still among conservatives and Conservatives. A Globe piece by Mr. Flanagan before the 2011 election was actually titled “An election is war by other means,” while earlier he had compared the 2008 campaign to ancient wars in which Rome (the Conservatives) defeated Carthage (the Liberals) and “razed the city to the ground and sowed salt in the fields so nothing would grow there again.” This is crazy talk.
The University of Ottawa’s Ralph Heintzman sums up this Harper credo: There is a “lack of sense of inner self-restraint on the part of the Prime Minister, a sense that it is some kind of war and therefore anything is legitimate, that it's quite acceptable for a prime minister to lie, for example, about how our parliamentary democracy works.”
It’s within this context that Robo-gate should be viewed.
Would a party that believed in politics as war hesitate to use the latest technology to keep opponents – the enemy! – from voting? Would a party that has already systematically undermined many traditional parliamentary and democratic niceties, as The Globe’s Lawrence Martin has repeatedly documented, hesitate to violate accepted democratic limits? Does a party that has already been found guilty of violating the election laws and that deliberately attempted to destabilize a sitting Liberal MP deserve the benefit of the doubt?
Here’s the problem. Both sides know with certainty the answer to these questions. Those of us who wouldn’t trust Stephen Harper if he told us today was Friday have no doubt who organized Robo-gate. In fact, I’m informed by a former Conservative operative familiar with both the party and technology that there’s far more to be revealed in this saga. This is said specifically to involve close ties between the Harperites and American Republicans who have been constructing a terrifying, full-blown voter suppression machine, as The Nation magazine, among others, has well documented and CBC Radio’s The Current has noted. I have no idea if this will be found to be true, but based on the record, it is surely not implausible.
Yet Mr. Harper's faithful base, that slightly-more-than-one-third of the electorate on whose behalf the entire government of Canada operates, knows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is some kind of vicious Liberal frame-up and that their man is as innocent and pure as the driven white snow we occasionally still get.
Both sides can’t be right here. Let’s all pray mine is wrong.
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