ROBOCALL - Drama Continues . . .

[Oscar]

Sona penalty does not reflect the true scale of election fraud: Ringleaders still at large

[ http://canadians.org/media/sona-penalty ... till-large ]

Media Release November 19, 2014

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( See BACKGROUND LINK below.)

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OTTAWA – Today, Michael Sona has been sentenced to nine months in jail with 12 months probation after being found guilty of participating in a voter suppression scheme in Guelph during the 2011 election.

The Council of Canadians continues to call on the Commissioner of Canada Elections to re-open the investigation into the 2011 election fraud which extended far beyond Guelph. With two court decisions pointing to the Conservative Party of Canada’s central database, it is essential for Canadians to know which Conservative Party officials used that data to orchestrate the election fraud.

“Justice Hearn has applied a sentence that reflects the seriousness of these crimes, but Justice Hearn also made it clear in his verdict that the ringleaders are still roaming free,” says Dylan Penner, Democracy Campaigner with the Council of Canadians. “So as long as the main perpetrators of the widespread 2011 election fraud remain at large, what's to prevent them from striking again in the next election?”

The Sona verdict does not resolve the issues surrounding the widespread orchestrated electoral fraud in the 2011 election. This fraud took place not only in Guelph, but in many ridings across the country. [ http://canadians.org/letter-to-Harper.html ] The Council of Canadians, which supported legal challenges of election results in six ridings across the country, and has recently challenged amendments to the Canada Elections Act that it argues are intended to suppress the vote and the constitutional rights of non-Conservative voters.

“The end of the Sona case means it’s all the more urgent that the Commissioner of Canada Elections re-open the investigation into the May 2011 election fraud,” says Garry Neil, Executive Director of the Council of Canadians. “The Commissioner must follow the lead of the federal court judge who found the most likely source of the information used to make the fraudulent calls was the Conservative Party database. If he is serious about protecting the integrity of elections, the Commissioner should demand that the Conservative Party reveal who accessed their database for illegal purposes during the 2011 election.”

Prime Minister Harper’s former Parliamentary Secretary Dean Del Mastro will also soon be sentenced for knowingly overspending on his Peterborough election campaign and then falsifying records in an attempt to cover it up. The sentencing hearing, originally scheduled for this Friday, has been postponed until January 27th.

Following the 2011 election, Del Mastro was the government’s original spokesperson on election fraud, prior to being charged himself with election fraud. -30-

Media contact

Sujata Dey, Media Officer
Cell: (613) 796-7724
Office: (613) 233-4487, ext. 226
E-mail: sdey@canadians.org

National Office
Reception: (613) 233-2773
Toll-free: 1-800-387-7177
TTY line 613-233-3744
9:00 to 17:00 hours Eastern Time, Monday to Friday.

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BACKGROUND ARTICLES on ROBOCALLS:

[ http://canadians.org/search/node/robocalls ]

[ http://www.macleans.ca/tag/robocalls/ ]

[Oscar]

Sona Verdict: Public Prosecution Service of Canada demands more jail time for Sona, but allows ringleaders to go free

[ http://canadians.org/media/sona-verdict-ppsc ]

Media Release December 18, 2014

Ottawa —The Public Prosecution Service of Canada (PPSC) is appealing the sentence of Michael Sona, seeking more jail time “to reflect the gravity of the offence.” [ http://www.ppsc-sppc.gc.ca/eng/ ] In response, the Council of Canadians is filing a formal complaint with the PPSC to re-open the investigation and to charge the ringleaders of the the election fraud campaign. [ http://canadians.org/sites/default/file ... d-1214.pdf ]

The Council of Canadians is questioning why the PPSC appears to have given up on finding the person or persons who “pulled the trigger” on the misleading and fraudulent 2011 phone calls.

“If the offence is severe enough to appeal for a stronger sentence in Michael Sona’s case, it’s severe enough to re-open the investigation to find the actual ringleaders of the crime,” says the Council of Canadians’ Democracy Campaigner Dylan Penner. “How can the prosecution be this concerned with Sona getting off with a light sentence, yet seem entirely unconcerned that the main perpetrators are still at large?”

On several occasions, the Council of Canadians has called on the Commissioner of Canada Elections to re-open the investigation into the widespread election fraud that took place in 2011. The Council has filed a formal complaint outlining the abundant evidence and potential avenues for further investigation. The investigation has since been called off.

According to a media report, a spokesperson for the Commissioner stated that re-opening the investigation would require a formal complaint. [ http://globalnews.ca/news/1685972/roboc ... nada-says/ ] To their knowledge, there was no such complaint. Yet, the Commissioner’s office had already received and responded to the Council of Canadian’s formal complaint.

In its formal complaint to the PPSC, [ http://canadians.org/sites/default/file ... d-1214.pdf ] the Council is urging that the new investigation follow the leads provided by the Federal Court ruling of Justice Richard Mosley [ http://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/dec ... 7/index.do ] and the Ontario Superior Court ruling of Justice Gary Hearn. [ https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/23692 ... =slideshow ]

“We agree with the Prosecution Service about the importance of a stronger sentence but the gravity of the offence should compel the re-opening of the Commissioner's investigation. The prosecutor and the judge in the Sona case made it clear that Sona did not act alone. Even Dean Del Maestro is saying the same thing,” says Garry Neil, Executive Director of the Council of Canadians. “It could not be clearer: there were others behind this effort to subvert the last election. The Commissioner of Elections has failed to live up to his responsibility to reopen the investigation to get to the bottom of this, which leaves the Public Prosecution Service with the obligation to do so.”

“Either Conservative Party senior leaders were directly involved in election fraud or they were astoundingly negligent in securing access to their voter database,” says Penner. “Voters have a right to know which is the case and who was behind this attack on democracy.”

The Council of Canadians supported the legal challenges to overturn election results in six ridings. - 30 -

The letter to the PPSC is available here: (Below)
[ http://canadians.org/sites/default/file ... d-1214.pdf ]

For media calls:

Sujata Dey, Media Officer
Cell: (613) 796-7724
Office: (613) 233-4487, ext. 226
E-mail: sdey@canadians.org

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LETTER: Council of Canadians is filing a formal complaint with the PPSC to re-open the investigation and to charge the ringleaders of the the election fraud campaign.
[ http://canadians.org/sites/default/file ... d-1214.pdf ]


Council of Canadians
300-251 rue Bank St, Ottawa, ON K2P 1X3
Tel: (613) 233-2773, Fax/Téléc: (613) 233-6776
http://www.canadians.org inquiries@canadians.org

Brian Saunders
Director of Public Prosecutions Public Prosecution Service of Canada
Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions
160 Elgin Street – 12th Floor Ottawa, Ontario K1A 0H8
info@ppsc.gc.ca

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Dear Director Saunders,

We write to file a formal complaint Public Prosecution Service of Canada, seeking a re-opening of the investigation into the election fraud that took place during the 2011 election.

We have filed a complaint in this matter with the Commissioner of Canada Elections (which is attached and available online here): [ http://canadians.org/sites/default/file ... 270814.pdf ] to no avail. Legal analysis of the Commissioner of Canada’s report on the investigation is also attached and available online here. [ http://canadians.org/sites/default/file ... 060514.pdf ]

We were disappointed to learn that the Commissioner does not intend to reopen the investigation, despite considerable evidence, which our complaint outlined in detail. This includes the Federal Court ruling of Justice Richard Mosley [ http://decisions.fct-cf.gc.ca/fc-cf/dec ... 7/index.do ] and the Ontario Superior Court ruling of Justice Gary Hearn [ https://www.scribd.com/fullscreen/23692 ... =slideshow ], which taken together underscore that others were involved, that the election fraud extended far beyond Guelph, and that the likely source of the data used to make the misleading calls was the Conservative Party’s CIMS database.

The PPSC’s appeal to seek a more serious sentence for Michael Sona that reflects the gravity of the crime, in and of itself makes the case for re-opening the investigation. If the gravity of the offence is sufficient to warrant a more serious sentence it warrants a more serious investigation to find the perpetrators who are still at large.

The Council of Canadians is calling on the PPSC to explore every investigative avenue possible to obtain the list of everyone who had access to the Conservative Party’s national CIMS database. It also should explore either who had the authority or at least the opportunity to make decisions about launching phone campaigns like the one used to mislead thousands of voters in 2011 about their polling locations. As we underscored to the Commissioner of Canada Elections, this case is far from closed and a new investigation is necessary. The PSCC has a mandate and a responsibility to re-open the investigation.

We look forward to your prompt response.

Sincerely,

Maude Barlow
National Chairperson

Garry Neil
Executive Director

Cc: Morris Pistyner
Chief Federal Prosecutor
Public Prosecution Service of Canada
Ontario Regional Office (Toronto)
2 First Canadian Place, Suite 3400 Exchange Tower,
Box 36 Toronto, Ontario M5X 1K6

[Oscar]

Dean Del Mastro’s lawyer says Crown showed ‘unmitigated gall’ in seeking jail for former Conservative MP

[ http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/02/19 ... vative-mp/ ]

Stephen Maher | February 19, 2015 | Last Updated: Feb 19 9:14 PM ET

LINDSAY, Ont. — Dean Del Mastro’s lawyer denounced prosecutors during his sentencing hearing Thursday, saying the Crown showed “unmitigated gall” in seeking to jail the former Conservative MP for up to a year.

The oft-delayed hearing began with Justice Lisa Cameron rejecting an application for a mistrial from Leo Adler, Del Mastro’s lawyer.

Mr. Adler said later he is seeking a small fine or a complete discharge for his client.

The hearing will resume April 28, during the corruption trial of fellow Conservative, Senator Mike Duffy.

MORE:

[ http://news.nationalpost.com/2015/02/19 ... vative-mp/ ]

[Oscar]

Taxpayers paid legal bills for Tory MPs in robocalls case

[ http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/ ... calls-case ]

GLEN MCGREGOR, OTTAWA CITIZENMore from Glen McGregor, Ottawa Citizen

Published on: February 25, 2015Last Updated: February 25, 2015 6:22 PM EST

The House of Commons paid a six-figure legal bill incurred by a group of Conservative MPs named in an unsuccessful legal challenge of the 2011 election results based on misleading robocalls.

Sources tell the Citizen that the House’s secretive Board of Internal Economy agreed to approve payments for fees incurred by at least six MPs who were named as respondents in the Federal Court challenge, which was backed by the Council of Canadians, an advocacy group.

The court in 2013 had ordered the council to pay the MPs a total of $13,206 – just a small share of the $355,907 their lawyer, Arthur Hamilton, had sought to recover.

At the time, it was thought the Conservative Party would pay for the remainder of MPs’ legal bills, but it now appears that the House stepped in and paid at least part of it with taxpayers’ money.

In a May 2013 ruling, Judge Richard Mosley rejected the council’s application to have the results of the election tossed out in six ridings but still found evidence that electoral fraud had occurred during the campaign. He did not find any one party responsible but pointed to the use of the Conservative Party’s voter-contact database in misleading pre-recorded “robocalls” made to voters.

A former Conservative campaign worker, Michael Sona, was convicted last year for his role in deceptive robocalls sent to voters in Guelph on election day. He is currently appealing the conviction and his nine-month jail sentence.

The exact amount the House paid to Hamilton’s firm, Cassels Brock, is not known.

In June 2013, Hamilton asked the court to order costs of $355,907, which included 577 billable hours of work performed by Hamilton and two of his colleagues. He told the court even that amount represented a fraction of the true costs. Hamilton charged $500 per hour, according to documents submitted in court.

Included in the costs was $166,363 to pay for expert witnesses brought in to provide evidence during the week-long hearing. It is unclear if the board agreed that the House should pay those costs, too.

During the trial, Mosley assailed the respondents’ legal tactics, accusing them of dragging out the litigation with legal “trench warfare.”

Hamilton could not be reached for comment this week.

The House of Commons would not confirm the payment and a spokesperson referred inquiries about it to the published minutes of the board meetings.

The minutes are too vague to determine how much taxpayers’ money was paid, to whom or for what reason. They cite at least one case involving a request to pay legal bills incurred by more than one MP but do not say which ones or the nature of the case. The amount paid is also not disclosed.

The Council of Canadians’ legal challenge argued that misleading live and prerecorded calls changed the election outcome in six closely fought ridings, represented by Conservative MPs Kelly Block, John Duncan, Jay Aspin, Joyce Bateman, Lawrence Toet and Ryan Leef. Ontario MP Joe Daniel was initially named as a respondent but was later dropped from the proceedings.

Duncan, who, as Conservative whip, sits on the board, declined comment but Toet, a Manitoba MP, confirmed this week that the House has paid his legal fees.

“The House paid for that because it was a House expense,” he said. He was unable to remember the amount paid.

Bateman said she would check and follow up with a response but did not. The other MPs named in the legal action did not respond either.

MORE:

[ http://ottawacitizen.com/news/politics/ ... calls-case ]

[Oscar]

Putting convicted MP Dean Del Mastro in leg irons was standard procedure, police say

[ http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canad ... police-say ]

Bruce Cheadle, The Canadian Press | June 26, 2015 | Last Updated: Jun 26 1:51 PM ET

OTTAWA — The Ontario Provincial Police say transporting convicted MP Dean Del Mastro to jail in handcuffs and leg irons is standard operating procedure used for everyone from fraudsters to serial killers.

The image of Del Mastro, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s former parliamentary secretary, shuffling out of the courthouse in Peterborough, Ont., appeared to rattle political observers who seldom witness the gritty day-to-day workings of the criminal justice system.

Del Mastro was sentenced Thursday to a month in jail after being convicted of cheating during the 2008 federal election and covering up his crime.

On Friday he was granted bail, but not before he’d spent a night in jail after being marched to a waiting van wearing handcuffs and leg shackles — TV cameras rolling all the while.

MORE:

[ http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canad ... police-say ]

[Oscar]

Del Mastro verdict raises questions about both the ethics and savvy of Harper’s palace guard

[ http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comme ... lace-guard ]

Stephen Maher | June 26, 2015 5:43 PM ET

Critics of the prime minister say his judgment is poor, pointing to a long list of accused fraudsters and expense chisellers whom he has placed in high office.

The suggestion is that Stephen Harper is not good at taking the measure of would-be senators or spymasters, missing their character flaws, and they end up disappointing him by cheating on expenses or taking kickbacks.

Certainly, Harper couldn’t be expected to know that Don Meredtih would eventually be accused of having a sexual relationship with a teenager. But the Dean Del Mastro story is different. It’s hard to believe that Harper didn’t know his parliamentary secretary was guilty.

On June 6, 2012, Glen McGregor and I published a story based on court documents that laid out the details of the violations Del Mastro was convicted of this week. Elections Canada had evidence that Del Mastro had exceeded his 2008 election limit by paying for political calls with a $21,000 personal cheque.

When the prime minister was asked about it in the House of Commons a week later, he spoke up for Del Mastro, saying “Mr. Speaker, as we all know, the honourable member for Peterborough has submitted all of his information to Elections Canada. . . . The member of Parliament not only won that election but has since won a subsequent election. He serves his constituents and this House honourably, and I think we all should treat each other with a little more consideration than that.”

I would like to know what steps Harper took between our story and his statement to satisfy himself that investigators were wrong.

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The prime minister let Del Mastro go after Elections Canada and Frank Hall, the witness whose testimony eventually sent him to jail. Del Mastro attacked Hall in the House, an abuse of parliamentary privilege.

Hamilton attacked Hall’s credibility in an unrelated court proceeding, making what I believe to be false accusations against him.

These are the people who have since overhauled our election law.

In the midst of the robocalls scandal, the Conservatives promised to strengthen Elections Canada. But when Tim Uppal, then the minister of democratic reform, brought the bill to a closed-door caucus meeting, MPs, including Del Mastro, spoke against it and Uppal’s bill was never tabled.

Pierre Poilievre, who took the job of attacking Elections Canada from Del Mastro, eventually tabled a new bill that stripped Elections Canada of its investigative powers and introduced many regulatory changes whose impact is only becoming clear as we approach the election.

For instance, Del Mastro was convicted of exceeding a $92,567 spending limit. Under the new law, the byelection to replace Del Mastro (which will be cancelled when the real election starts) will have a limit of $508,000.

There is good reason to be nervous about the conduct of the election this fall.

Harper, who has not commented on Del Mastro’s sentencing, could give Canadians comfort by making it clear that he won’t defend cheaters in the future.

[Oscar]

Tories Robocalled to Help Gary Lunn Win in 2008, Duffy Testifies

[ http://thetyee.ca/News/2015/12/10/Duffy ... tion-2008/ ]

Senator makes unexpected allegation in court, says Lunn 'knew nothing about it.'

By Andrew MacLeod, December 11, 2915 TheTyee.ca

Senator Mike Duffy made an unexpected allegation in court today on a seven-year-old election fraud cold case from British Columbia.

Duffy faces 31 charges, many of them involving travel he billed to the senate. Testifying in his own defence Thursday, Duffy described the rationale for a 2009 trip to help then Conservative cabinet minister Gary Lunn in the Saanich-Gulf Islands riding north of Victoria.

"He'd had a close call during the previous election and it was only through the divine intervention of [late former senator and campaign manager] Doug Finley's black ops group at Conservative headquarters that he managed to get himself re-elected," Duffy reportedly told the court.

"Basically what happened was that they used robocalls to misdirect NDP voters, to split the vote and allow Gary Lunn to win," Duffy said. "He knew nothing about it, except that they phoned him afterward and said 'You're welcome Gary.' He said 'What?' [They said] 'We got you in.'"

The allegation relates to a case The Tyee followed from when it happened in 2008. [ http://thetyee.ca/Blogs/TheHook/Federal ... ciousCall/ ]

On the eve of the Oct. 14, 2008 election, automated phone calls were made to people in the riding encouraging them to support the NDP candidate, Julian West. The calls went out even though West had withdrawn 20 days earlier. He'd dropped out too late to have his name removed from the ballot.

Recipients said the calls appeared to be coming from NDP riding association president Bill Graham's phone, but Graham insisted they had nothing to do with him or the party.

West received 3,700 votes, significantly more than the margin of 2,625 votes that separated Lunn from his nearest challenger, Liberal Briony Penn.

At the time, Lunn's local campaign manager Byng Giraud told The Tyee, "We didn't do it ... I hope nobody's thinking it's us. If they were, I'd be quite upset."

Giraud did not respond to calls today.

Investigations came up empty

Official investigations into the 2008 calls came up empty. A Telus spokesperson said it is possible to "spoof" calls, obscuring where they come from, even to the phone company. The practice is legal in Canada and there was nothing the company could do, he said.

The Commissioner of Canada Elections* investigated but said they "found no one who had actually been influenced in their vote because of the purported telephone call, nor was he able to identify the source or the person or persons who actually made the calls."

In the House of Commons in 2012, former prime minister Stephen Harper said there was no Conservative connection to the calls, and that sore losers who claimed they were a trial run for later robocalls in Guelph in 2011 were conducting a smear campaign against the Tories.

And there it stood until today, when Duffy testified that the Conservatives were responsible for the calls in Saanich-Gulf Islands in 2008 and had used their voter database to encourage NDP voters to vote for that candidate.

Lunn did not return The Tyee's phone call, but the Canadian Press reported he told the newswire that he never knew who made the misleading phone calls and never told Duffy that it was Conservative headquarters.

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Green Party leader Elizabeth May defeated Lunn in the 2011 election and represents Saanich-Gulf Islands. Global TV quoted her from Paris, where she's attending the COP 21 climate summit. "Duffy may have wanted to just throw that [allegation] in, but it does raise for me a really large alarm," she said.

May called for reopening the investigation into what happened in 2008 in her riding. "When people get away with election fraud, it could happen again."

*Story corrected to reflect that the Commissioner of Canada Elections investigated the allegations, not Elections Canada, on Dec. 11 at 10:00 a.m.

[Oscar]

Ex-Tory staffer Michael Sona convicted in robocalls scandal to appeal sentence

[ https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/201 ... tence.html ]

Former Conservative staff Michael Sona is asking Ontario's Court of Appeal to shorten length of sentence to less than nine months in jail.

May 15, 2016

The case of a former Conservative staffer convicted in the 2011 federal election robocalls scandal is going before Ontario’s highest court this week.

Michael Sona is asking Ontario’s Court of Appeal to impose a sentence less than the nine months in jail he received in November 2014.

But Crown prosecutors are simultaneously asking the court to send Sona to jail for 20 months, arguing his earlier sentence wasn’t harsh enough given the seriousness of his crime.

“This was both a sophisticated, large-scale fraud, and a concerted attempt to subvert a democratic election,” the Crown argued in a factum filed with the court. “The Crown appeals and asks this court to powerfully denounce and deter such direct assault on our most fundamental democratic institutions — the right to vote.”

Sona — now 26 and currently out on bail after spending 13 days behind bars — was the first person convicted of wilfully preventing or endeavouring to prevent an elector from voting under the Canada Elections Act.

The trial judge who sentenced him said he believed Sona did not act alone in a scheme in which some 6,700 automated phone calls were placed on the morning of the 2011 federal election, largely to numbers in Guelph, Ont., wrongly telling people their polling station had been moved to a different location.

The calls were organized and paid for by Sona, who was the director of communications for the Tory candidate in Guelph, and targeted people believed to be “non-supporters of the Conservative party,” the Crown noted.

Political staffers testified at Sona’s trial that the then 22-year-old had boasted about the scheme after the election.

“This was no momentary prank. It was a calculated conspiracy amongst politically sophisticated individuals to alter the outcome of a federal election by fraud,” the Crown argued. “Many of the victims also said that they will never again feel comfortable expressing their political views or allegiances for fear of being targeted again in the same way.”

The Crown suggested the judge at Sona’s trial lost sight of two major components of the crime which call for a higher sentence — a large scale fraud on the public and the deliberate subversion of democracy and the rule of law.

“This crime was callous and profoundly harmful,” the Crown argued. “The sentence failed to bring that home either to Sona or to others possibly eager to unleash their own creatively crafted dirty political tricks.”

Sona’s lawyer, however, argued that his client’s nine-month sentence exceeded what was necessary for denunciation and deterrence.

MORE:

[ https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/201 ... tence.html ]