#Robocalls: Take action

It's become increasingly clear that actions were taken to suppress the votes of Canadians, in Guelph and allegedly in other ridings in the 2011 Federal Election. Don't let some media outlets spin this as a story about "crank calls" or "bad politics". This was an illegal act that violated our charter rights. The Guelph Green Party has just distributed an email to it's supporters urging them to contact your local media and elected officials to demand that the incident be treated with the severity it deserves. The person/people/organization responsible for attempting to mislead Guelph voters must be found and held accountable.

Write a letter or email to the following media outlets:

The Guelph Mercury: editor@guelphmercury.com.
Toronto Star: lettertoed@thestar.ca
CBC (editorial): yournews@cbc.ca
Toronto Sun: http://www.torontosun.com/letter-to-editor
National Post: http://www.nationalpost.com/contact/letters/index.html?name=Letters&subject=Letter+to+the+editor
Globe and Mail:  letters@globeandmail.ca

Update:  If you'd like to tell the Guelph MP Frank Valeriote what you think, contact him at: Frank.valeriote@parl.gc.ca

For a template letter/email to the editor, you can use this if you would like.

Another impact of the robo calls

We're at the point where it's been proven that the Conservative campaign for Marty Burke knowingly worked to suppress voter turnout (see: bit.ly/wvr5kb for the latest).

So here was a question I was discussing over the weekend: Is it possible that these calls may have prevented the Green campaign for John Lawson from getting 10% of the vote? This is a significant number, as the Lawson campaign would receive a rebate of around $27,000. Any amount less than 10% of the vote and the campaign does not receive that rebate.

As this investigation continues, it will be interesting to learn who the Burke campaign was targeting. If these calls went to people that the Conservative campaign identified as Liberal and Green supporters, then I wonder if it is possible to prove that the Green's would have earned their campaign rebate?

For a look at the numbers, visit Election Canada here: http://elections.ca/scripts/ovr2011/default.html. Essentially, the Green campaign would have needed 2,191 more votes to reach 10% of the total turnout in the May 2011 election.

CTV reporting on the robocalls

http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20120223/robocalls-tories-politics-elections-120223/

There's a comprehensive series of stories covering the Conservative robo-call voter suppression into 18 ridings in Canada. PM Harper states that there may have been "rogue" elements of his party that organized this act of disenfranchising Canadian voters.  From this list of names attached to the company that made the phone calls, here are potentially some campaigns that contain those "rogue" elements (names listed from invoices to Rack9, available on my previous blog post):

Campaign to elect Stephen Harper - Calgary Southwest 

Campaign to elect Rona Ambrose - Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women
Campaign to elect Jason Kenney - Calgary Southeast - Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism
Campaign to elect Ryan Hastman - Edmonton Strathcona
Campaign to elect Leon Benoit - Vegreville—Wainwright
Campaign to elect Laurie Hawn - Edmonton Centre
Campaign to elect Lee Richardson -  North Battleford
Campaign to elect Devinder Shory - Calgary Northeast

Uh Oh: Proof that the Conservatives organized robo-calls on election day in "swing ridings"

For the full read of the gory details: http://www.scribd.com/sfharris/d/82589631-Payments-to-RackNine-from-local-Conservative-Campaigns

But it boils down to: Steven Harper's campaign, the campaign of many cabinet ministers and other Conservatives paying the company Racknine for GOTV calls on Election day to "Swing" ridings. This is not very many steps away tying the Prime Minister Office and central Conservative campaign directly to voter suppression.There is one email in particular about halfway down about some confusion about payment for robo-calls into swing ridings, notable because a) The voter suppression calls were made in to swing ridings and b) the email is from STEPHEN HARPER'S CAMPAIGN MANAGER IN CALGARY.

So, what happens if we find out that leaders in the Conservative party actively suppressed the vote of Canadians?

Guelph 2011 Federal Election Robo-Call fraud

On election day way back in May of 2011, robo-calls were placed to an an unknown number of voters in Guelph, informing them that their voting location had changed.

That sentence may seem innocent, but it isn't by any measure.

First things first: A robo-call is an automatically recorded voice message that is sent to your phone. If you pick up, it gives the message directly to you. If your answering machine picks up, it leaves a message. Odds are you have received one at some point.

Secondly: Voting locations had not changed. These calls created mass confusion for all campaigns. Anecdotally this particularly affected the Green campaign for John Lawson (disclosure: I was the manager) and the Frank Valeriotte Liberal campaign. Voters were showing up to locations that were not voting stations and then not having the time or patience to go to the correct location to vote.

Finally: An investigation has now linked the calls to a company that primarily contracts out work to the Conservative Party of Canada:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/22/racknine-inc-fraudulent-election-calls-traced/
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Elections+Canada+investigating+robocalls+that+misled+voters/6194146/story.html
If this turns out that there is one or two independent malicious/evil individuals who were doing there best to prevent Canadians from completing their civic rights then the odds are there will be significant consequences to those individuals and the story will die.

However...this could become the story of Conservatives bringing the ugliest possible side of American-style attack politics to Canada. This could turn into the story where the conservative party is connected to these calls in some way. The Conservative Party of Canada denies involvement: https://twitter.com/#!/davidakin/status/172525793229012992

Let's hope that our governing party and Prime Minister are not connected to actions that most Canadians will find reprehensible. I believe that all of us would agree that elections (and governance) should be about engaging as many Canadians as we possibly can in a discussion about what is best for us. Not lying and manipulating people out of the process.

Students: This isn't helping

Walman Drive: 8:20am Friday February 3rd

If you are a University of Guelph student, you probably didn't do this. You probably have never been out with anyone or a group that has done anything like this. But: Guess what? You just got blamed. The owner of this car is likely to come out of their house, see their vehicle and immediately feel a moment of anger about students living in their neighbourhood. It might not even have been a student, but there's a pretty good chance that this happened between midnight and 8 this morning and most non-students are asleep in that time frame. The people that live on this street year round probably don't like the idea of having to walk through garbage to go to work and have a very easy time making the assumption that someone would have to feel like they don't live their to do something like this.

If you're out with someone doing something this stupid: Maybe ask them to stop? If you see a mess like this, maybe proactively get out there and help clean up? Leave a note on this house saying how frustrating it is that actions like this make it difficult for students and permanent residents to form a sense of community. 

I'm confident that we can do better than this. If you're looking for a way to positively contribute to your community, why not check out Winterfest this weekend? You can sign up to help through Reg on the university website, or you can just check out the city's information page and just show up. Choose to be a great neighbour, we can make this a better community.

City Getting it Wrong?

In today's Mercury, Scott Tracey reports on Guelph's city council deciding to change course on their approach to the "rental housing challenge." The article describes how we are going from a by-law that wasn't working, restricting the number of lodging houses and accessory apartments (places where students usually live in high numbers) and moving towards a system where these types of residences will be licensed.

I'm not convinced that either of these approaches deal with the issues in our neighbourhoods. We have the opportunity, as a community, to help a generation learn how to be good neighbours, good community members and engaged adults. I would love to hear about how individual councilors are working towards fostering relationships between students and permanent residents, perhaps even creating a culture where students want to stay in Guelph post-graduation and create jobs/industries that will last through the 21st century.

Assuming that Mr. Tracey's article accurately reflects the meeting that occured, it is unfortunate that councillors (particularly in Ward 5 and 6) aren't talking about the actions they are taking with their friends, neighbourhood groups and constituents to pro-actively frame "rental housing challenges" as an opportunity to make Guelph a better place to live. Continuing to focus on how we can better regulate our landlords and police our student community members does not seem like a sustainable, long-term solution.