Speaking for the government during the Friday (May 24) Question Period in Canada’s House of Commons, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre dismissed a citizen’s group as a “hyper-partisan organization” and a ruling by a Federal Court judge as a vindication of election results in the 2011 federal election.
Poilievre was reacting to questions by the Official Opposition NDP party about a ruling by Federal Court Judge Richard G. Mosley regarding the election results in six electoral ridings in the federal election of 2011.
The citizen’s group Canadian Council of Canadians represented a number of voters in an appeal to the court to overturn results because of misinformation about voting locations that was communicated to voters via telephone.
In a ruling released last Thursday, Judge Mosley concluded “I find that electoral fraud occurred during the 41st General Election but I am not satisfied that it has been established that the fraud affected the outcomes in the subject ridings and I decline to exercise my discretion to annul the results in those districts.”
He found that a data bank of the ruling Conservative Party of Canada was the “likely source” for a voters’s list that was used to make misleading calls, but found no proof to show Conservative party members were behind the calls.
The judge noted that he had little cooperation from the MPs who were the subject of the application of the Canadian Council of Canadians:
“In reviewing the procedural history and the evidence and considering the arguments advanced by the parties at the hearing, it has seemed to me that the applicants sought to achieve and hold the high ground of promoting the integrity of the electoral process while the respondent MPs engaged in trench warfare in an effort to prevent this case from coming to a hearing on the merits.”
The text of the judgement is here.
In the House of Commons Question Period Official Opposition NDP MP Libby Davies started the questions on the issue Friday morning:
Mr. Speaker, Canadians want the Conservatives to come clean on this whole sordid affair. We now have another federal judge slamming the behaviour of the Conservatives. In his judgement on electoral fraud, Justice Mosley writes:
Despite the obvious public interest in getting to the bottom of the allegations, the [Conservatives] made little effort to assist with the investigation at the outset despite early requests.
Will the Conservatives continue to claim they fully co-operated when the court has now said the exact opposite is true?
To which government MP Pierre Poilievre answered:
Mr. Speaker, the case was brought by a hyper-partisan organization, called the Council of Canadians, which failed to produce a single solitary person who was prevented from voting because of a robocall.
That case by this partisan group was dismissed yesterday by the judge.
Then it was the turn of another Official Opposition NDP MP, Françoise Boivin, to ask about the court ruling:
Mr. Speaker, in the court decision in relation to the fraudulent calls made during the last election, Justice Mosley said that the Conservative database was quite possibly the source of those calls. He also pointed out that the Conservatives all but refused to co-operate with the Elections Canada investigation.
Why did the Conservatives refuse to co-operate fully with an election fraud investigation?
To which Conservative government MP Pierre Poilievre answered:
Mr. Speaker, the hon. member misquoted the ruling in question. I have in front of me words from that ruling that the judge said there was:
….no finding that the Conservative Party of Canada or any CPC candidates…were directly involved in any campaign to mislead voters.
That is why this partisan attempt to overturn the democratic results in those six ridings was rejected by the judge.
More information:
Text of ruling of Justice Richard G. Mosley – here
Question Period, House of Commons, Friday, May 24, 2013 – here
For reasons beyond our control, and for an undetermined period of time, our comment section is now closed. However, our social networks remain open to your contributions.