Robo-Calls: New Election "could" end up being justified

It's already stuck, and people do care.

When these crooks are tossed from office, it will be a great day.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/02 ... omplaints/

Elections Canada confirms 31,000 complaints as Tory robocalls counterattack backfires

The Tories have been left red-faced after an attempt on Thursday to blame the Liberal party for suspicious robocalls from a U.S. call centre backfired.

The embarrassing blunder comes as Elections Canada confirmed it has received 31,000 complaints from Canadians about robocalls during the election.

“This is an absolutely unprecedented situation. We’re in uncharted waters,” said interim Liberal leader Bob Rae, in reference to the robocalls complaints, on Friday. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper and parliamentary secretary Dean Del Mastro launched an attempted counterattack in Question Period on Thursday, claiming it was the Liberals who used an American automated calling firm in North Dakota, and not the Conservatives.

Del Mastro cited evidence that he said showed that former Liberal MP Joe Volpe used the American company in the last campaign.

“We learned that Joe Volpe paid over $25,000 to Prime Contact, a calling company with offices in North Dakota,” he said.

It has been reported that voters in Volpe’s Toronto riding received harassing phone calls during the last election, which appeared to come from North Dakota’s 701 area code.

“These calls were made on behalf of the Liberal party,” Del Mastro said.

“I see that they used this company quite a bit. It seems that they were robodialing quite a number of people on behalf of the Liberal party.”

But the Tory attack failed badly after it was revealed they had actually confused two different call centres — one in Canada and one in the U.S. — with the same name.

“Mr. Speaker, they are going to need to get some better researchers, because there is a firm in North Dakota with the same name but it actually does not work for the Liberal party,” said NDP MP Charlie Angus.

The Liberals used Canadian call centre Prime Contact during the election, but it has no connection to a centre in North Dakota, also named Prime Contact.

Rae said Harper was smearing thousands of Canadians complaining about the calls.

“The prime minister and his colleagues have remarkable ability to turn themselves into victims,” Rae said.

“The prime minister cannot deny the fact that two of the companies that are involved with respect to [campaign] activities are now under serious investigation. Nor can he deny the fact that there is an RCMP investigation ongoing with respect to what happened in Guelph.”

Elections Canada confirmed Friday it had undertaken an investigation into the more than 31,000 communications received from Canadians regarding robocalls placed during the election.

“Elections Canada has received a high volume of complaints in recent days as a result of MPs and political parties calling on the public to send information to the agency,” a statement said.

“More than 31,000 contacts have been initiated with Elections Canada by Canadians. Elections Canada is reviewing these and will take action as appropriate.”

Up until Friday, the federal agency had refused to confirm or deny the initiation of an investigation.

The Commissioner of Canada Elections has the authority to ask for help from law enforcement agencies — like the RCMP — during periods of “high volume,” the statement said.

Elections Canada will release a report to Parliament in “due course.”

“Obviously, we’ll be making submissions to Elections Canada with respect to what we see and what we have found,” Rae said. “But they’ll have to be the ones to ultimately investigate and determine what actually happened.”