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.
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Sunday, December 2, 2012

Elections Canada slow to investigate robocalls.

Perhaps that should read `Elections Canada fails to protect our voting system` or better yet EC protects wrong doers! Either way its pretty clear by now that they have been completely ineffective in investigating the many complaints from across the country regarding the 2011 election both before and after that date.

We wonder if it were not for the Council of Canadians and the citizens who are perusing the alleged interference with the voting process within a few riding’s in the courts if in fact anything would be done at all. It now appears that they are only just now attempting to get phone records regarding the malicious calls and it would also seem that EC was aware of a least some such calls to electors BEFORE the election and BEFORE such allegations became common knowledge. ``Emails between officials at the agency show the first complaints came on April 29 from Kitchener-Conestoga, Ont., and Saint-Boniface, Man. `` thats over 18 months ago!!

I am not going to belabor the point here, several others have been keeping on top of this story, most notably The Sixth Estate but also a few newspapers (links have been added to the LONG list on my Election Malfeasance page). I will merely say that my faith in our electoral system, and more particularly the agency charged with seeing that it is not subject to `cheating` from either the candidates or the electorate, has been severely compromised.

With the close results in the recent federal by-elections there is once again much talk of `cooperation`between the opposition parties to both defeat the Conservatives and to bring in electoral reform. Political parties in Canada `cooperating`! I will believe that when I see it. Electoral reform, thats a long process that requires decisions on a process to select the new system and a referendum to confirm that choice. I am not holding my breath on that one either, but wonder if Elections Canada can be trusted to oversee any new system given their apparent inability to oversee the current one!
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