Say it ain't so....

Joined
Jul 12, 2003
Posts
14,131
......election corruption in Canada. If it looks like corruption, smells like corruption and sounds like it, it more than likely is. 'Fess up Stevie, you're busted.

Elections Canada has tracked thousands of fraudulent telephone calls back to an Edmonton telephone robotics company.

Voters with ties to the Liberal Party in about in about a dozen ridings were called by the firm on voting day and told in a recorded message that their polling station had been moved. It gave them a new address. None of it was true. It was a scam. had close ties to the last Conservative election campaign.

The investigation began soon after the elections and could soon end up in court.
It remains unclear what role the company, RackNine Inc. played in what happened.

The taped voice told them in excellent English:
"This is an automated message from Elections Canada. Due to a projected increase in voter turnout, the location of your poll location has been changed."
Your new voting location is at (address.)

Some liberals did not take the trouble to go to the new address and chose to stay home. Others went to the new address and were furious to find nothing there. They thought Elections Canada had screwed up.
Others went back to the original address and voted, after giving Elections Canada returning officers a piece of their mind.

It is not known how many thousands of votes the Liberals lost because of the scam, or how many of the targeted ridings passed into the hands of conservatives because of the scam.

It is against Canadian law to trick someone so as to make them lose their vote.

The scam was complex. Although the robotic telephone machines at RackNine Inc, in Edmonton sent out the thousands of misleading recorded messages, the original messages was sent to RackNine Inc., for re-sending from a cellphone in Joliette, Québec. Evidence shows that everything started from phone number 450-760-7746 in Joliette.

The calls ended up in ridings in Ontario where the electoral races were close between Conservatives and Liberals in Kitchener, Guelph, London, and in Victoria in British Columbia.

RackNine Inc. is a small call center in Edmonton, which has done work for the national Conservative Party campaign for at least nine Conservative candidates, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the riding of Calgary Southwest.

We do not know yet the extent of the involvement of the Conservative Party.
The RCMP are still looking for the genius behind the scam.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has denied the Conservative Party is involved in the scam: “Our party has no knowledge of these calls.”
He added that whoever is responsible will face the full consequence of the law.

The deniability factor slipped a notch when Conservative campaign manager Jenni Byrne denied any connection with the scam, but added that “if anyone on a local campaign was involved, they will not play a role in a future campaign.” Some punishment. He could be in jail by then.

Then a newspaper close to the Conservative Party ran a photo of Michael Sona, standing next to Harper, claiming he was being investigated by the Conservative party in relation to the calls. The photo came from the prime minister’s office.

Sona was the Conservative Party organizer who on voting day in the May 2 election showed up at a polling station at the University of Guelph and tried to make off with a ballot box. The students pounced on him and he left.

A lawyer for the Conservatives tried in vain later to persuade Elections
Canada to invalidate the votes in that box on the grounds that someone had tampered with the box.

Liberal leader Bob Rae told journalists that the Conservative Party had singled out a lone organizer as the culprit only after the scam story had become public in the news media.

New Democrat MP Pat Martin said that the story put out by Conservative Party brass that the scam involving “hundreds of thousands of calls” on election day was the work of a “lone punk” defies credibility.

Martin says he wants a full RCMP investigation because he doesn’t trust a parliamentary committee hearing.


Now it's been disclosed that repeated harrassing calls were made, often late at night, to Liberal leaning citizens claiming to represent the local Lib candidate and then spouting insults.

The plot thickens....and to think this country oversees the 3rd world elections to prevent corruption.
 
shit, since Harper came into office we have becomea third world nation

" hey, lets endorse asbestos"...." let's suspend the government when they threaten to kick me out"..." the public doesnt need to know about how much moneyu we're spending on jet fighters"..." lets create a bill that will allow the government to spy on anyone they want anytime they want.. and call people pedophiles if they oppose it"
 
shit, since Harper came into office we have becomea third world nation

" hey, lets endorse asbestos"...." let's suspend the government when they threaten to kick me out"..." the public doesnt need to know about how much moneyu we're spending on jet fighters"..." lets create a bill that will allow the government to spy on anyone they want anytime they want.. and call people pedophiles if they oppose it"

Do you think it's too much to hope this'll bring them down?
 
It won't bring them down. Canada has this annoying habit of indulging in tedious, expensive, drawn out inquiries that exhaust the public and the media. Years from now the results will come out with the headline "Hey, remember when...?"
 
That's true. I hate the way this gang is damaging this country both at home and abroad. I guess we're stuck with them for the foreseeable..........
 
That's true. I hate the way this gang is damaging this country both at home and abroad. I guess we're stuck with them for the foreseeable..........

I liked their fiscal policies, but the new realities of small market deficit spending are catching up with them. As for their ideological outlook, I am very nervous.
 
They have elections in Canada? I thought it was just a consensus of pub patrons.
 
They have elections in Canada? I thought it was just a consensus of pub patrons.

No, each party has a hockey team which plays in a round Robin tournament. Each game is called a 'riding'. Whoever wins the most ridings, gets to be the ruling team. And the Captain of that team gets to be the leader. Everyone in the country gets to watch the games except for BC, who only get to watch the post-game highlights on TSN
 
No, each party has a hockey team which plays in a round Robin tournament. Each game is called a 'riding'. Whoever wins the most ridings, gets to be the ruling team. And the Captain of that team gets to be the leader. Everyone in the country gets to watch the games except for BC, who only get to watch the post-game highlights on TSN

The US could learn from this.
 
I liked their fiscal policies, but the new realities of small market deficit spending are catching up with them. As for their ideological outlook, I am very nervous.

They inherited a very healthy state of affairs fiscally - it was none of their doing that our banks were so secure.

Can you really see John Baird as effective in foreign affairs - I can see nothing positive in th gov. today.
 
No, each party has a hockey team which plays in a round Robin tournament. Each game is called a 'riding'. Whoever wins the most ridings, gets to be the ruling team. And the Captain of that team gets to be the leader. Everyone in the country gets to watch the games except for BC, who only get to watch the post-game highlights on TSN

Goons
 
They inherited a very healthy state of affairs fiscally - it was none of their doing that our banks were so secure.

Can you really see John Baird as effective in foreign affairs - I can see nothing positive in th gov. today.



Alberta is very happy. You should be very pleased that Harper told the U.S. (in no uncertain terms) where to stick it. If the dummies down south don't want the crude, the Chinese do.


 
They inherited a very healthy state of affairs fiscally - it was none of their doing that our banks were so secure.

Can you really see John Baird as effective in foreign affairs - I can see nothing positive in th gov. today.

They inherited a boom economy budget as we were entering a bust economy.

And while I'm not a fan, there is no party capable of stepping up and leading right now. Neither the Liberals nor the NDP have leaders in place. So we're stuck with Harper and he knows it.
 


Alberta is very happy. You should be very pleased that Harper told the U.S. (in no uncertain terms) where to stick it. If the dummies down south don't want the crude, the Chinese do.



....and how do we get it to them? Pipeline across the Rockies and the Coastals in an earthquake zone? very smart.
 
....and how do we get it to them? Pipeline across the Rockies and the Coastals in an earthquake zone? very smart.

The TAPS line was designed to cross the Denali fault zone and fared quite well during the 2002 8.0 magnitude quake.
 
The TAPS line was designed to cross the Denali fault zone and fared quite well during the 2002 8.0 magnitude quake.

....and then there will be the tankers passing through some of the narrowest and treacherous waters off the coast of BC.

It isn't IF but WHEN there's a disaterous oil spill......you remember the Exxon Valdez in 1992? They're still living with that oil up there and what about the Gulf fiasco? No one and nothing is foolproof so why tempt fate so blatently in one of the most beautiful places on earth?
 


Alberta is very happy. You should be very pleased that Harper told the U.S. (in no uncertain terms) where to stick it. If the dummies down south don't want the crude, the Chinese do.



It's not the dummies down South, it's the dummy in the Whitehouse.

Hopefully we'll be meeting up next November.........:)
 
It's not the dummies down South, it's the dummy in the Whitehouse.

Hopefully we'll be meeting up next November.........:)

I hope so too, between the two if we're selling dirty oil let's send it over land not by sea, you guys can have the spills. :)
 
Now we know why the government puts such little effort into stopping telemarketing. That's what those Liberal voters get for including their number in the Do Not Call Registry.
 
Now we know why the government puts such little effort into stopping telemarketing. That's what those Liberal voters get for including their number in the Do Not Call Registry.

Well, the DNCR doesn't work worth a damn so strike that excuse.
 
....and then there will be the tankers passing through some of the narrowest and treacherous waters off the coast of BC.

It isn't IF but WHEN there's a disaterous oil spill......you remember the Exxon Valdez in 1992? They're still living with that oil up there and what about the Gulf fiasco? No one and nothing is foolproof so why tempt fate so blatently in one of the most beautiful places on earth?

That was 1989, March.

The Chinese already own a bunch of the oil. They'll be getting it one way or another.
 
That was 1989, March.

The Chinese already own a bunch of the oil. They'll be getting it one way or another.

Sadly this is true and BC will be stuck with the inevitable clean-up.

"My New Study: Coal is 1500 Times Worse for the Environment than Oil Sands"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-weaver/the-alberta-tar-sands-and_b_1288264.html

The United States mined 1.17 billion short tons of coal in 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_mining_in_the_United_States

Now the Alberta oil will go to China and the United States can buy oil from Iran.

Coal is the devil's product but of all the oil produced today the bitumen offered by Alberta is the dirtiest and the hardest to get rid of in a spill.
 
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