Election Call Tapes Being Reviewed By Conservatives
The Conservative Party is reviewing tapes of every call made by the Responsive Marketing Group call centre in Thunder Bay, Ont., in the last election before Elections Canada investigators arrive next week, CBC News has learned.
Investigators are planning to interview the centre's staff, which the Conservative Party hired to make phone calls to identify and rally supporters in the 2011 federal election.
The news comes on a day when Conservative MPs' counterattack backfired after they accused the Liberals of being behind mysterious election calls — but mixed up two similarly named call companies, naming the wrong one as the smoking gun.
After a week of denials over the role the Conservative Party and a campaign team played in phone calls directing voters to the wrong polling station, and opposition party allegations over harassing calls in other ridings, Prime Minister Stephen Harper pushed back in question period.
The Liberals, Harper said in the House, have said people got misleading phone calls from numbers in the United States. But when two of his MPs tried to offer more details, they named a U.S.-based company that the Liberals have never used.
Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae said Harper was smearing thousands of Canadians complaining about the calls.
"The prime minister and his colleagues have remarkable ability to turn themselves into victims," Rae said.
"The prime minister cannot deny the fact that two of the companies that are involved with respect to [campaign] activities are now under serious investigation. Nor can he deny the fact that there is an RCMP investigation ongoing with respect to what happened in Guelph."
Elections Canada is investigating automated robocalls in Guelph, Ont., that tried to send voters to the wrong polling station on election day.
Opposition MPs say they have reports of robocalls or strange, harassing live calls from more than 45 ridings in the lead-up to the May 2, 2011, election. They allege the Conservative campaigns made the rude calls, claiming to be the Liberals, in an attempt to make the Liberal campaigns look bad. Harper says the opposition parties didn't report the calls at the time and are acting like sore losers.
Investigators are planning to interview the centre's staff, which the Conservative Party hired to make phone calls to identify and rally supporters in the 2011 federal election.
The news comes on a day when Conservative MPs' counterattack backfired after they accused the Liberals of being behind mysterious election calls — but mixed up two similarly named call companies, naming the wrong one as the smoking gun.
After a week of denials over the role the Conservative Party and a campaign team played in phone calls directing voters to the wrong polling station, and opposition party allegations over harassing calls in other ridings, Prime Minister Stephen Harper pushed back in question period.
The Liberals, Harper said in the House, have said people got misleading phone calls from numbers in the United States. But when two of his MPs tried to offer more details, they named a U.S.-based company that the Liberals have never used.
Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae said Harper was smearing thousands of Canadians complaining about the calls.
"The prime minister and his colleagues have remarkable ability to turn themselves into victims," Rae said.
"The prime minister cannot deny the fact that two of the companies that are involved with respect to [campaign] activities are now under serious investigation. Nor can he deny the fact that there is an RCMP investigation ongoing with respect to what happened in Guelph."
Elections Canada is investigating automated robocalls in Guelph, Ont., that tried to send voters to the wrong polling station on election day.
Opposition MPs say they have reports of robocalls or strange, harassing live calls from more than 45 ridings in the lead-up to the May 2, 2011, election. They allege the Conservative campaigns made the rude calls, claiming to be the Liberals, in an attempt to make the Liberal campaigns look bad. Harper says the opposition parties didn't report the calls at the time and are acting like sore losers.
