The Proof is in the Evidence

Doesn't look too good, despite all the disclaimers. Not that there is any hard-and-fast evidence of wrong-doing on the part of the federal Conservative campaign during the closing hours of the last election, last May. But there are too many coincidences that are inexplicable, or seem to be. At least eighteen ridings across the country experienced a kind of skulduggery interference with the electoral process; not at polling booths, but in intrusive, confounding telephone calls.

Those were so-called robotic calls, with automated messages, while in another 14 ridings live calls were placed of a harassing nature seemingly geared to disgusting the receivers and turning them away from a particular candidate. The opposition parties have triumphantly accused the governing Conservatives of having descended to the level they always suspected them of inhabiting.

And, of course, the Conservatives deny, categorically that they would tarnish themselves in such an unforgivably outrageous, anti-Democratic, unfair, and miserable manner.

There are no clear and easy answers. Despite that news stories have zeroed in on one unfortunate Conservative volunteer located in Guelph at the time who had seemed to overstep the bounds of the acceptable through the authorization of local calls in a contract with a West-coast-based company geared toward those automatic call transfers.

And that young man, latterly employed as an assistant to a Conservative MP has either now resigned or been let go, ignominiously.

Needless to say a volunteer, a young man who works zealously on behalf of a candidate wouldn't have the authority on his own to hire a company's services that go for about $30 to $40 an hour, so if he was involved it seems strange that he is being sacrificed on the altar of guilt-without-a-hearing.

And those party lists that identify Liberal voters - for it was only the Liberal candidates that were targeted - how might some Conservative apparatchiks avail themselves of such a list, held close to the chest of Liberals? Let alone a similar list belonging to the Conservatives?

And if such a campaign had been unleashed why would it be that the candidates representing the most important contests weren't targeted?

The campaign itself, to turn prospective voters away from Liberals, and in favour of Conservatives, was a clumsy one; it was only the acquiring of the lists that revealed some degree of sophistication. Because the Conservatives themselves, when apprised of what was happening at the time, didn't take it seriously, they didn't bother to undertake an investigation.

A check of the database of Elections Canada records of phone bank spending by various campaigns entirely failed to demonstrate a pattern that might reveal a correlation between the calls and their source; no links whatever discovered. And here's the kicker: senior Liberals don't believe Conservative campaign chairman Guy Giorno would approve anything of this nature.

All those live calls furthermore, would require a good degree of co-ordination, along with the funding to keep them going. Where and whom? The involvement is opaque and rather peculiar in its flavour. Finger-pointing is fairly quick and easy and those condemnations make for stinging sound bites, but based on supposition.

We can only suppose that somewhere, deep below the surface, the answers exist and they will eventually reveal themselves. Revelations that would be fascinating in determining whether the condemning flatulence has a base, or whether those doing the condemning are entirely off base.