It is hard to believe that the robocall affair that has become the focus of attention on Parliament Hill these past two weeks was orchestrated at the highest levels of the Conservative Party.
It would have been an immensely foolish risk to take for a highly iffy return. To make a decisive difference in the campaign, it would have had to have been a large-scale operation involving a legion of perpetrators – and as is the case with any conspiracy, the chances of it being blown would be proportional to the number of people in the know.
It would appear from the 31,000 complaints that Elections Canada has received from ridings in various parts of the country about automated phone calls during last year’s election campaign that it was a widespread operation. But that’s not to say all these complaints are founded, or that all the calls crossed the line into illegality.
Many of the complaints are about calls that were simply annoying and deceitful, in that they appeared to come from people posing as Liberal campaign workers but were intended to put people off voting Liberal by being made at awkward times and laced with rudeness. That’s dirty pool, but it’s not illegal.
As for illegality, the only hard evidence so far has come out of the Ontario riding of Guelph, where people were directed to nonexistent polling stations by calls purporting to come from Elections Canada.
But a curious thing about that operation is its ridiculously amateurish overtones, with the perpetrator using the ludicrous pseudonym Pierre Poutine, supposedly resident on Separatist St. And if indeed there was an attempt by the Conservative camp to hijack the vote, it failed dismally; the Liberal candidate won the riding by a substantially higher margin than in the previous election.
But the Conservatives are not helping their cause with their response to the robocall allegations.
There have been the standard denials, fully to be expected, from the highest levels, starting with the prime minister and the party’s senior campaign operatives. But in recent days that has been followed by the Conservatives’ designated point people on the issue resorting to the absurd tactic of accusing the Liberals of being at the root of the robocall shenanigans. It stretches credibility to the breaking point that a party would go to such lengths for a campaign whose only conceivable effect would be to discourage Liberal voter turnout.
If anything, this implausible charge only heightens suspicions that the Conservatives have something to hide.
Then, in a progression from one level of ridiculousness to another, the Conservatives demanded that the Liberals turn over their phone records from the last campaign for public scrutiny, but declined to do the same with their own – even though, if they have nothing to hide, this would fully exonerate them.
Given the damage this wretched affair has done public confidence in the integrity of the country’s electoral system, it is in the higher interest of all parties to come entirely clean with the Elections Canada investigation and turn over all potentially relevant evidence, including their election phone records.
This should be accompanied by a toning-down of the overheated rhetoric over this affair. Once the facts are fully known, blame can be attached to the demonstrably guilty parties and punishment meted out.
The robocalls are a serious matter, but there are other serious matters facing the country that should concern parliamentarians in the meantime.