A blog to give a voice to our concern about the continued erosion of our democratic processes not only within the House of Commons and within our electoral system but also throughout our society. Here you will find articles about the current problems within our parliamentary democracy, about actions both good and bad by our elected representatives, about possible solutions, opinions and debate about the state of democracy in Canada, and about our roles/responsibilities as democratic citizens. We invite your thoughtful and polite comments upon our posts and ask those who wish to post longer articles or share ideas on this subject to submit them for inclusion as a guest post.
Contact us at democracyunderfire@gmail.com

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Compare and Decide where the problem lies..

The latest story regarding robotic phone calls during the last federal election is that in one riding the Liberal candidates team made an error and failed to identify themselves in a number of calls where they passed on (totally correct) information about an opposing candidate. They have been fined $4,900 by the CRTC for breaking telemarketing rules. Once the error was pointed out the candidate cooperated fully with the investigation and apologized on behalf of his staff for the error and is seeking to make the rules clearer for both his own future election team and that of others.

On the other hand the ongoing investigation into numerous misleading and fraudulent in numerous riding across Canada is going nowhere. The alleged instigators of the calls are doing everything they can to stall legal proceedings in the courts to challenge certain election results where results were close and could have been affected by said phone calls and Elections Canada who in this case are those responsible for getting to the bottom of the problem appear to be dragging their feet and are attempting to withhold information from the court.

In the latter case the number of complaints which EC has admitted to receiving has more that doubled since the widespread use of these calls designed to suppress voter turnout by anyone not supporting the conservatives became public. We note that since this story broke and EC started 'investigating' the head honcho there has be replaced by an individual chosen by the government, the budget of EC has been cut by the government, and their has been no cooperation in releasing information from the government, and no call for a public inquiry by the government. Is is just coincidence that the government in question is the party that is thought to be the one responsible for the fraud, and the one appealing every move the citizens make to get to the bottom of this affliction on our democracy. I think not.

A special Tip o the Hat to POGIE for his two posts on this linked above. For the whole picture on the ongoing robocall fraud please see my Election Malfeasance page which list numerous links to articles on this subject, they are in approximate chronological order.

Rural Readers please visit my survey on Rural Internet Communications, for more information on why I am seeking such information please see this post at The Rural Canadian.



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