ROBOCALLS Court Case: Reports on Days 1, 2 & 3

[Oscar]

ROBOCALLS Court Case: Reports from Maude on Days 1, 2 & 3 + please help with legal fees if you can-our democracy is at stake

Compiled e-mails from Maude on Robocall court case now underway.

Day 1: Canadians Take Robocalls to Court
Day 2: The heart of the matter
Day 3: Do the math

Note the request to assist with the legal fees by donating online Democracy 24/7 fund.
http://www.canadians.org/election/democ ... legal.html

Click here to donate to the Democracy 24-7 Legal Fund now!
http://canadians.org/election/democracy247-donate.html

Donate by mail: The Council of Canadians, 700-170 Laurier Ave W, Ottawa, ON K1P 5V5 (Memo: Democracy 24-7)

Donate by phone: 1-800-387-7177 x233

Help spread the word! Forward this email on to family and friends. Share the link to the Council's election fraud webpage
(www.canadians.org/democracy247 ) on Facebook and tweet why this is important to you using the hashtag #Democracy247.

The Council of Canadians does not accept money from corporations or governments. Our work is sustained by the volunteer energy and generosity of concerned individuals like you. Due to our strong advocacy role, the Council of Canadians is not a registered charity and is unable to issue charitable tax receipts for donations.

What better Xmas gift for us all than saving our Parliamentary democracy from the Harper Conservative's devastating campaign to diminish and dismantle democracy in this country on behalf of their Neoliberal drive towards more global extraction of natural resources, accumulation of wealth and speculative capital and corporate rule at the expense of ordinary citizens and the planet?

http://www.canadians.org/election/index.html

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From: Maude Barlow <council-of-canadians@topica.email-publisher.com>
Subject: Day 1: The heart of the matter
Date sent: Wed, 12 Dec 2012 08:41:49 -0800
Send reply to: <pwoolridge@canadians.org>

Canadians Take Robocalls to Court - Day 1

Dear Council of Canadians supporter,

Under the sheen of freezing rain that blanketed the Supreme Court of Canada, the historic legal cases of eight Canadians against voter suppression and fraud in the 2011 federal election finally got underway.

Day one of what is expected to be a full week of legal proceedings focused on the outstanding preliminary motions brought by Conservative Party lawyers to have the cases dismissed.

Up first was their motion on champerty and maintenance - alleging the Council of Canadians has no standing in these cases, and the eight applicants are mere stooges the Council is using to reap a financial windfall.

Imagine Tom Parlee's reaction. The applicant from the riding of Yukon has traveled to Ottawa, and was in the courtroom with me. At hearing Conservative Party lawyer Arthur Hamilton level his allegations, Tom leaned into me and whispered, "So the Conservative Party is basically saying I don't have a mind of my own. Well, I've got news for them."

For Tom, the fact that someone was trying to mess with his vote was reason enough to launch his legal application. Add to that his belief in civic duty and a strong moral compass, and it was an easy decision for him to step forward.

But there was simply no way Tom could afford the hundreds of thousands of dollars in litigation and court fees required to pursue this. Enter the Council of Canadians. Contrary to the Conservative Party motion, third parties have long played an important role in public interest legal cases. It is typically the only means by which the ordinary citizen can afford to pursue a legal action to defend a fundamental individual democratic right.

While the Council does not have the budget to support the applicants, nor the fundraising advantage of the Conservative Party of Canada, their fight for democracy is simply too important to be constrained by their ability to pay for it. That's why we stepped in and launched the Democracy 24/7 fund, and have asked Canadians of all political stripes to help the applicants defend Canada's democracy.
[ http://www.canadians.org/election/democ ... legal.html ]

As for the windfall Mr. Hamilton suggests the Council stands to gain, Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley may have summed it up best yesterday morning in stating, "There is no pot of gold at the end of this case." The win sought in these cases is far more valuable than money; it is the restoration of voters' rights and the integrity of Canada's democracy.

The Conservative Party motions didn't stop here though. They also argued the applicants should have known the calls they received were fraudulent at the time they occurred - on or just before Election Day 2011 - and should have launched their legal actions then. Their argument makes the illogical assertion that the average person should have immediately suspected fraud when Elections Canada called to tell them their polling station had moved. The applicants have argued that they did not know the calls they received were part of a widespread campaign of voter suppression that affected the outcome of the election.

Perhaps the fiercest exchange of the day was the attack on Frank Graves, President and CEO of EKOS Research, by Conservative lawyer Arthur Hamilton. Mr. Graves was called to the stand to give evidence in response to a late affidavit filed to challenge the methodology of his poll, which corroborates that fraudulent and misleading calls were widespread, targeted at non-Conservative voters and effective in suppressing voter turnout. However, rather than asking about the methodology, Hamilton continued a long-standing attack on Mr. Graves' name and reputation.

Day one came to a close with the promise of more argumentation on these preliminary motions carried over for this morning.

As a supporter of the Council of Canadians, you know the stakes of these cases and why it's so important that we support them. But now the applicants are facing a $300,000 legal bill and need you help today. Please make your donation of $24 to the Democracy 24/7 Legal Fund, or as generous as you can be, now. Or call in your donation to 1-800-387-7177. All contributions are welcome and directly help to cover urgent legal costs!

[ http://www.canadians.org/election/democ ... legal.html ]

I'll leave you with this final thought. Arthur Hamilton proclaimed that while these cases may be of interest to the public, they are not public interest cases. For Bill, Jeff, Kay, Ken, Peggy, Sandra, Tom and Yvonne - the eight applicants - and the thousands of us individual Canadians who are standing with them, they most certainly are.
With hope and resolve,

Maude Barlow
National Chairperson, The Council of Canadians

P.S. - These landmark legal cases are being funded by public donations from ordinary people like you who believe in democracy and that election fraud cannot be tolerated. Conservative Party lawyers have driven court costs up and donations are urgently needed for the upcoming Federal Court hearings. Your donation of $24, $52 or $365 will directly help the applicants pursue their legal actions for as long as it takes to restore the integrity of our democracy.

= = = = = =

Day 2: The heart of the matter

Dear Council of Canadians supporter,

"Every citizen of Canada has the right to vote..."

This is a fundamental right granted to us in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and the foundation upon which all democratic societies are built.

And it's against the law to mess with it.

But on Day 2 of the landmark legal cases, the Federal Court heard potent evidence that someone did just that in the May 2011 federal election.

Lawyer for the eight applicants, Steven Shrybman, began outlining in detail how an unprecedented campaign of widespread and targeted voter suppression was centrally organized and effective. He said that the campaign affected the outcome of the election in the six ridings and he asked the judge to overturn them.

But Mr. Shrybman led off with an important point of clarification for the court. The applicants do not accuse the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) or any party official of participating in the fraudulent activity. What they argue is that fraud did occur, and it benefitted the CPC.

Up first were the sordid events surrounding "Pierre Poutine," the infamous character widely reported to be the culprit behind voter suppression in the riding of Guelph, ON. Drawing on documents from Elections Canada's investigators, Mr. Shrybman led the court through the sophisticated lengths Pierre Poutine went to in an attempt to suppress the vote of thousands of unsuspecting people through fraudulent calls, and the covert measures he took to conceal his identity and cover his tracks.

In fact, these measures were so successful that it took the Postmedia News report that first broke the robocall scandal (almost a year later) for tens of thousands of Canadian voters - including the eight applicants - to put two and two together.

Turning to recently filed documents from Elections Canada investigators, Mr. Shrybman deftly connected the dots between the fraudulent activity in Guelph and evidence that the voter suppression campaign was far more widespread. The most powerful piece of that evidence reveals that Elections Canada is now actively investigating 1,400 complaints in 247 ridings across the country, including many of the six ridings in these legal cases. And one of those complaints comes from an affected voter in the Quebec riding of Rivière-du-Nord, who did not vote as a direct result of having received fraudulent calls. This was also true for Leanne Bielli, the ninth applicant, whose case was withdrawn.

Adding significant weight to this evidence are internal emails between Elections Canada officials obtained by media under federal access to information laws. The emails reveal election officials were alerted to complaints by voters across the country of potentially fraudulent calls over the final days of the 2011 campaign, apparently coming from the CPC. Deeply concerned, the officials contacted CPC lawyer Arthur Hamilton to notify the party of these complaints.

Mr. Shrybman then moved to the testimony of RMG, a telemarketing firm that makes calls on behalf of the CPC. RMG Chief Operating Officer Andrew Langhorne admits calls made to CPC supporters included a statement that "Elections Canada has made a number of last changes to polling locations." This is problematic for two reasons: Elections Canada asked the parties not to advise voters of polling station changes and, despite RMG calling into five of the six ridings in these cases, only one polling station location had changed. So why did RMG make calls into ridings where there was no changes at all?

Annette Desgagne, an employee of RMG at the time of these calls, has given sworn testimony that, because of the way people responded to her "polling station change" scripts, she believes she misled voters. She was so alarmed that she reported her concerns to the RCMP.

Day 2 ended with the promise of more evidence to come from the applicants.

With hope and resolve,

Maude Barlow
National Chairperson, The Council of Canadians

<><><><><><>

Day 3: Do the math

Dear Council of Canadians supporter,

With the first wave of powerful evidence of a widespread and targeted campaign of voter suppression put before the Federal Court on Tuesday, on Day 3 hard numbers were presented to support it.

Steven Shrybman, lawyer for the applicants, led the court through the findings of a poll commissioned by the eight applicants and conducted by EKOS Research to survey the scope and impact of the fraudulent calls in the six federal ridings involved in these legal cases.

2,872 people in the six ridings were polled, along with 1,500 people in other ridings as a 'control' group, and asked if they received a call telling them that their polling station had changed. The results? You were between three and four times more likely to have received that fraudulent call if you didn't support the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) than if you did.

"We can say with confidence this is not an artifice of chance," Frank Graves, president and CEO of EKOS Research, testified in court.

You will remember that on the first day of these hearings, CPC lawyer Arthur Hamilton leveled repeated personal attacks on Mr. Graves (which prompted Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley to caution Mr. Hamilton), in an attempt to have Mr. Graves dismissed from the proceedings as an expert witness, along with the findings of the poll.

Mr. Hamilton's shameful antics continued on Wednesday. Rather than arguing the evidence, Mr. Hamilton tried to divert the court's attention away from it through further personal attacks on Mr. Graves.

Michael Adams, the founding president of Environics, a competing polling firm, set Mr. Hamilton straight by referring to Mr. Graves as a highly respected professional pollster, and the CPC attacks against him as utterly unfounded.

Mr. Graves' evidence is also supported by the expert evidence of Dr. Neil Nevitte, who was retained by the applicants to provide an independent opinion of the EKOS survey. Dr. Nevitte is the principal investigator of the World Values Survey (Canada) and a co-investigator of the Canadian Election Studies (1993-2009). Dr. Nevitte serves as a senior election advisor with the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and as a technical advisor to many international non-governmental organizations on the prevention and detection of election fraud and on the conditions for free and fair elections.

Having carried out that review, Dr. Nevitte concludes:

My view is that the EKOS Report, for the most part, makes relatively modest claims that are advanced, usually, with related caveats and proper caution. The EKOS data, I think, are useful. They have integrity and because that is the case, the critical issue at hand, in my view, concerns the inferences that can be reasonably drawn from Tables 3.1 and 3.2 of the EKOS Report [revealing thousands of calls were made into the six ridings, and that they disproportionately targeted non-CPC supporters]. These data, to my mind, are central to the issue of whether the so-called robo-calls were "targeted."

Numbers and statistical research methodology may not be everybody's cup of tea, but on Day 3 they provided compelling proof of the unprecedented attack on our democracy.

With hope and resolve,

Maude Barlow
National Chairperson, The Council of Canadians

P.S. – These landmark legal cases are being funded by public donations from ordinary people like you who believe in democracy and that election fraud cannot be tolerated. Conservative Party lawyers have driven court costs up and donations are urgently needed for the upcoming Federal Court hearings. Your donation of $24, $52 or $365 will directly help the applicants pursue their legal actions for as long as it takes to restore the integrity of our democracy.

Click here to donate to the Democracy 24-7 Legal Fund now!
[ https://vws1.magma.ca/www.canadians.org/election/
democracy247-donate-legal.html ]

Donate by mail: The Council of Canadians, 700-170 Laurier Ave W, Ottawa, ON K1P 5V5 (Memo: Democracy 24-7)
Donate by phone: 1-800-387-7177 x233

Help spread the word! Forward this email on to family and friends. Share the link to the Council's election fraud webpage
( www.canadians.org/democracy247 ) on Facebook and tweet why this is important to you using the hashtag #Democracy247.

The Council of Canadians does not accept money from corporations or governments. Our work is sustained by the volunteer energy and generosity of concerned individuals like you. Due to our strong advocacy role, the Council of Canadians is not a registered charity and is unable to issue charitable tax receipts for donations.

[Oscar]

More good news in historic robocalls case

[ http://canadians.org/blog/more-good-new ... calls-case ]

September 18, 2013 - 2:46pm

Back in June, I shared with you the news that the Conservative MPs filed an outrageous request seeking reimbursement of $355,907 in legal costs. They wanted the nine individuals who bravely launched the election fraud cases to pay for the Conservative Party's lawyers – even though they were the ones who needlessly drove up the cost by bringing countless procedural motions to keep the case from even being heard.

At the time of his ruling, the judge called these delaying tactics "trench warfare." In his latest ruling on costs, he made sure that such trench warfare was not rewarded.

Rather than the outrageous $355,907 the Conservative MPs requested, the judge awarded them a truly modest amount – the $1,000 security deposit for each application plus $6,206 in disbursements, which is about five per cent of what they wanted.

In his decision, the judge made note of what you and I have known all along: that "the applicants in this matter were genuine public interest litigants motivated by a higher purpose" who "stood to gain nothing other than the vindication of their electoral rights."

And thanks to donations from thousands of generous Canadians like you, vindication is exactly what the nine individual applicants received. It was in the original ruling that found that widespread voter suppression took place and that the likely source of the data used to perpetrate this fraud was the Conservative Party database. It's in this latest decision rebuking the Conservative MPs' exorbitant demand for costs.

Time and again, the individuals who launched these cases have proven the legitimacy of their cause. Thanks to their efforts and yours, election fraud is not just a passing scandal but an ongoing concern.

While these cases may be over, our quest for a vibrant democracy is not. Have you signed our petition to end electoral fraud yet? We need electoral reform legislation with real teeth to make sure something like this never happens again.

Thank you for standing up for our fundamental right to vote.

With hope and resolve

Maude Barlow

- - -

Maude Barlow is the National Chairperson of the Council of Canadians.

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SHIELDS: Re: "Tory spin on robocalls ruling at odds with judge's own words

----- Original Message -----
From: Stewart Shields
To: CommissionersOffice ; Prime ministre ; thomas.mulcair@parl.gc.ca
Cc: C�line Hervieux-Payette ; dnd_mdn@forces.gc.ca ; flaherty ; Office of the Premier ; Peter - M.P. Julian ; peter watson ; premier@gov.nl.ca ; raitt ; T Banks
Sent: Friday, September 20, 2013 11:25 AM
Subject: UPDATED - Tory spin on robocalls ruling at odds with judge's own words - Inside Politics

I think all Canadians owe a great deal to the Council of Canadians for bravely standing for democracy while it has come under such a terrible attack from the Conservative Party!!

Robo-Calls has become very important when the limited information we have been able to gather is closely examined!! We know Judge Mosley indicated for all to hear that Conservative members fought with “trench warfare” to keep the Council of Canadian’s hearing from taken place!!

Mosley also accepted that the information to carry out illegal robo-calls all across Canada was made possible by a voters' list in the possession of the federal Conservative party!! How this information was made available to those guilty of using them for suppression of voter turn-out all across Canada is very interesting indeed?

From information gained about the Senate scandals, we know this present PMO has little to no respect for Canadian law or the spoken truth.

Members bribed Senator Duffy into silence on matters the Conservative Party did not want their public members to know. With this knowledge in our back pockets and realizing the massive job to attempt voter suppression on a national scale—it seems robo-calls could have also been a PMO undertaking??

In Canada, it is unfortunate that our democracy can come under attack by political forces within Canada without justice being sought by our Elections Canada or our RCMP. For this reason, we would like CISIS to become involved to ensure this undercover attack cannot spoil our 2015 election or make it not worth our attention?

I feel very sorry for members of Election Canada who haven’t the balls to even put Dean Del-Mastro before a judge on information gathered from the Ottawa Citizen articles?

I have little hope for Canada’s democracy until there is visible and actual change on how the Reform/Conservative party have polluted our political system and openly lied about it while the RCMP watched!! How many “Tories At Large” does Canada need?

Stewart Shields

= = = = = =

UPDATED - Tory spin on robocalls ruling at odds with judge's own words

[ http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/politics/in ... words.html ]

Had anyone been listening along to the internal soundtrack accompanying my leisurely mid-evening perusal of CBC colleague Susana Mas' report on the recent court ruling on costs stemming from that concluded robocalls election challenge, they would have heard the record screech to a halt right about the time that I hit this quote from newly installed Conservative Party communications director Cory Hann:

In an email to CBC News, Cory Hann, the director of communications for the party, said, "Conservative MPs won the case."

"The judge looked at all costs submissions and awarded the Conservative MPs costs for defending their legal and legitimate election results."

To put it as diplomatically as possible, it would seem Hann's analysis of the decision handed down by Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley yesterday is ... somewhat incomplete.

Specifically, it appears that he may have missed the bit in the ruling that recapped what the MPs in question had asked for, as far as compensation, which worked out to more than $300 K in total -- $120,000 for filing costs and legal fees, plus $235,907.56 in additional disbursements, including more $166 K for the services of expert witness Dr. Ruth Corbin, $10 K for travel and accommodation, $6.3 K for transcripts, research and deliveries and finally, $54,202.35 that was submitted, in the words of the judge "without further explanation."

Mosley, however, settled on a distinctly smaller amount:

[24] Having considered the matter further, I have reached the conclusion that the "modest fixed amount for the costs of the hearing" that should be awarded the respondent MPs is the amount paid into court for the seven applications, $7,000, plus disbursements of $6,206. I make no award for the other costs incurred by the respondent MPs in preparation for and conduct of the hearing.

(The "modest fixed amount" metric, by the way, was pretty much exactly what Mosley had initially been inclined to apply, as noted in his initial ruling, in which he went on at some length about the 'trench warfare' that had characterized the respondent MPs' attempts to stop the case from coming to court. )
[ http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/politics/in ... fraud.html ]

UPDATE: As it turns out, Hann's claim that the Conservative MPs "were awarded their legal costs" is even more potentially confusing to readers unaware of the full context than it initially appeared.

Although the judge did indeed award the MP respondents just over $13,000 in costs, he had already signed off on the applicants' request for $18,000 in costs related to earlier motions. Given that earlier finding, it would seem -- and has been confirmed by the Council of Canadians -- that it is actually the MPs who will have to send along a cheque, albeit for just under $5K after the $13 K they won in costs has been deducted from the total owing.

Still more baffling was Hann's subsequent assertion, which didn't make it into our online piece, but was included in the full response that he provided to CBC yesterday:

We are pleased the courts shut down the Council of Canadians applications and saw them for what they were; a completely transparent attempt to overturn legitimate election results purely because this left-wing activist group didn't like them.

It was at this point that I briefly wondered whether Hann had somehow wound up with a copy of an entirely different court decision.

How else, really, can the above interpretation be reconciled with what Mosley actually wrote in his ruling, in which he explicitly reaffirmed that the complaint, while ultimately unsuccessful, "was not a case of unwarranted election challenges," but one based on a "factual foundation," albeit one that, in his view, failed to meet the necessary threshold to succeed in overturning the results?

Here's what Mosley had to say, in his own words:

MORE:

[ http://www.cbc.ca/newsblogs/politics/in ... words.html ]