Liberals also targeted Guelph with robocalls
andyt @ Fri Mar 16, 2012 10:20 am
You're misusing the term begging the question.
But, they're accountable to us, since we pay their way. And we are represented by the govt, so they are accountable to the govt. But, if that govt starts messing with CBC and pushing them to spin things favorably to them, is that what you want?
And is it any better that the private media is accountable only to their advertisers?
FieryVulpine @ Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:03 am
Interesting. Considering how secretive the CBC is with its (some would argue overly-generous) billion-plus dollar budget. I wonder why THEY get antsy when the gov't proposes a ten percent cut. Do they have something to hide?
andyt @ Fri Mar 16, 2012 11:05 am
Are you saying the CBC won't reveal it's budget to the govt? As for cuts, show me one govt agency that wouldn't get antsy.
andyt @ Fri Mar 16, 2012 1:43 pm
Chief electoral officer says investigators have 700 robocall election complaints
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/chief-electora ... 12875.html
dino_bobba_renno @ Fri Mar 16, 2012 1:53 pm
andyt andyt:
Chief electoral officer says investigators have 700 robocall election complaints
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/chief-electora ... 12875.html
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/chief-electora ... 12875.html
He also stated to be cautious when throwing that number around because they haven't been confirmed or validated.
$1:
He urged Canadians not to jump to any conclusions based on possibly inaccurate or incomplete information.
OnTheIce @ Fri Mar 16, 2012 2:29 pm
andyt andyt:
Chief electoral officer says investigators have 700 robocall election complaints
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/chief-electora ... 12875.html
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/chief-electora ... 12875.html
That was a quick drop of 30,300 complaints.
EyeBrock @ Fri Mar 16, 2012 2:29 pm
Yet the rabid Harper-haters rant on......
CDN_PATRIOT @ Fri Mar 16, 2012 3:00 pm
EyeBrock EyeBrock:
Yet the rabid Harper-haters rant on......
They have little else to do on a daily basis.
-J.
andyt @ Sat Mar 17, 2012 12:04 am
dino_bobba_renno dino_bobba_renno:
andyt andyt:
Chief electoral officer says investigators have 700 robocall election complaints
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/chief-electora ... 12875.html
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/chief-electora ... 12875.html
He also stated to be cautious when throwing that number around because they haven't been confirmed or validated.
$1:
He urged Canadians not to jump to any conclusions based on possibly inaccurate or incomplete information.
I see this as a half way piece between those that say it was one bad apple in Guelph and those that would claim the 30,000 were all valid complaints. And I will admit that I got the impression from the media that the 30,000 were all real complaints.
But I was reassured by something I read somewhere - the Electoral officer saying they have the resources and intentions to fully investigate these 700 complaints. I still worry with the stated hate on that Harper has for Elections Canada and the power that he has, that he will interfere somehow. But an honest investigation is all I'm asking for. Then, when, as we all know at least some conservatives go down for this, the CPC will still claim "victory' the way they did with the in and out scandal, but I think people will see it for what it is.
andyt @ Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:30 pm
Robo-calls warrant ‘huge investigation,’ former Harper aide says
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/pol ... le2372338/
$1:
A former chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper says last year’s election day robo-calls are of a scale he’s never seen before and warrant a “huge investigation.”
Ian Brodie, who was Mr. Harper’s chief of staff from 2006 to 2008, said revelations from an Elections Canada probe that has centred on the Southern Ontario riding of Guelph and its local Conservative campaign likely indicate “a very devious local effort that could well lead to charges against several campaign volunteers.”
But he didn’t dismiss the possibility of “a national effort at subterfuge.”
“Something seems to have gone on, on a scale I’ve never seen before,” Mr. Brodie wrote in an e-mail....
Elections Canada has received 700 complaints about misleading calls since reports of its Guelph probe surfaced three weeks ago. Data gathered by media and opposition parties suggest a pattern is emerging across dozens of ridings: Complaints show that Canadians reporting misleading calls had previously been phoned by the Conservative Party to find out how they would vote.
Conservative partisans tried on Friday to tamp down the notion that the problem was bigger than Guelph, releasing records of calls made by an unknown operative who hid behind the alias Pierre Poutine. These records, provided to select journalists Friday, showed that thousands of calls were made to residents of Guelph, and that more than 140 stray calls were dialled to ridings outside the Southern Ontario city – likely in error.
Still, the records don’t explain why many voters outside of Guelph contend they received misleading calls directing them to wrong polling locations within their own communities.
From the onset of last year’s federal election, Guelph was a riding to watch. The national Conservative campaign dispatched Mr. Harper to the city west of Toronto, and several prominent Conservative MPs, including Jim Flaherty and Jason Kenney, visited to lend their support.
Rookie Tory candidate Marty Burke’s prospects of winning appeared strong, with early polling suggesting the airline pilot was within 900 to 1,200 votes of knocking off popular Liberal incumbent Frank Valeriote, a source familiar with the campaign said. But centralized control over messaging frustrated the Guelph team, former campaign workers noted. Mr. Burke, known as a blunt talker, was told to stick to the party’s script.
“The Marty Burke campaign was a stressed-out campaign,” a source said. “It was a campaign that was micromanaged in Ottawa.”
However, with about 10 days to go before the May 2 vote, the national campaign’s interest in the riding “dropped off the radar” and donations for the local campaign dried up, the source said.
Reports that Mr. Burke believed pregnant women should not have an abortion under any circumstance and an incident at the University of Guelph, where a key member of his team was accused of disrupting a mid-campaign special ballot, had apparently scuttled Tory momentum in the riding. It appeared then that Mr. Burke might not even finish in second place.
Ian Brodie, who was Mr. Harper’s chief of staff from 2006 to 2008, said revelations from an Elections Canada probe that has centred on the Southern Ontario riding of Guelph and its local Conservative campaign likely indicate “a very devious local effort that could well lead to charges against several campaign volunteers.”
But he didn’t dismiss the possibility of “a national effort at subterfuge.”
“Something seems to have gone on, on a scale I’ve never seen before,” Mr. Brodie wrote in an e-mail....
Elections Canada has received 700 complaints about misleading calls since reports of its Guelph probe surfaced three weeks ago. Data gathered by media and opposition parties suggest a pattern is emerging across dozens of ridings: Complaints show that Canadians reporting misleading calls had previously been phoned by the Conservative Party to find out how they would vote.
Conservative partisans tried on Friday to tamp down the notion that the problem was bigger than Guelph, releasing records of calls made by an unknown operative who hid behind the alias Pierre Poutine. These records, provided to select journalists Friday, showed that thousands of calls were made to residents of Guelph, and that more than 140 stray calls were dialled to ridings outside the Southern Ontario city – likely in error.
Still, the records don’t explain why many voters outside of Guelph contend they received misleading calls directing them to wrong polling locations within their own communities.
From the onset of last year’s federal election, Guelph was a riding to watch. The national Conservative campaign dispatched Mr. Harper to the city west of Toronto, and several prominent Conservative MPs, including Jim Flaherty and Jason Kenney, visited to lend their support.
Rookie Tory candidate Marty Burke’s prospects of winning appeared strong, with early polling suggesting the airline pilot was within 900 to 1,200 votes of knocking off popular Liberal incumbent Frank Valeriote, a source familiar with the campaign said. But centralized control over messaging frustrated the Guelph team, former campaign workers noted. Mr. Burke, known as a blunt talker, was told to stick to the party’s script.
“The Marty Burke campaign was a stressed-out campaign,” a source said. “It was a campaign that was micromanaged in Ottawa.”
However, with about 10 days to go before the May 2 vote, the national campaign’s interest in the riding “dropped off the radar” and donations for the local campaign dried up, the source said.
Reports that Mr. Burke believed pregnant women should not have an abortion under any circumstance and an incident at the University of Guelph, where a key member of his team was accused of disrupting a mid-campaign special ballot, had apparently scuttled Tory momentum in the riding. It appeared then that Mr. Burke might not even finish in second place.
CDN_PATRIOT @ Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:35 pm
Pardon me if I don't believe someone who seemingly has an axe to grind with his old running mates. His timing is questionable.
-J.
andyt @ Sun Mar 18, 2012 2:45 pm
Yep - he's a CPC hater now. But, Elections Canada says they'll get to the bottom of this, so we'll see.
Of course Harper has already laid the ground in case Elections Canada finds some CPC culpability:
$1:
In 2001, Stephen Harper was president of the National Citizens Coalition. That was his opening line in a fundraising letter. His loathing for the election overseers was almost pathological, recalls Gerry Nicholls, the conservative commentator who worked with Mr. Harper at the NCC. It was a “blood feud,” he says, one that appears to be “never ending.”