Right.
Now at the time during that federal election, of course, Jeremy was the incumbent. And we were listening to the poll results come in and at the end of the evening by the time I went to bed, the media had declared Jeremy the winner because he was up by a few hundred or perhaps even several hundred votes. His main opponent was a Liberal candidate by the name of Gary Merasty. Gary was a fairly well known first nations individual, a former chief of one of the bands up in the northern Saskatchewan area.
What happened was there was only one poll left to report. Jeremy was up by, as I say, a number of votes, a few hundred votes, and declared the winner. I went to bed thinking he was re-elected. I woke up in the morning and all of a sudden I find out that Gary Merasty had won. The circumstances were such that the last poll to report was from a very northern riding on a first nations reserve and the report came in three and a half hours late, after they had obviously known all of the vote counts up until that point in time. And when the ballots were counted three and a half hours later they found an amazing thing. They found, number one, that over 100% of the eligible voters in that first nations reserve voted. I think it was about 103% to 105% of voter turnout. And every single ballot cast was in favour of Mr. Merasty.
Of course, Mr. Harrison thought this was highly unusual, as do I still to this day. I think most reasonable Canadians would think there was something fishy going on there. Probably if you were to be making a haphazard guess as to if there was voter fraud, perhaps someone wanted Mr. Merasty to win, waited to find out what they needed to win in terms of votes, stuffed the ballot box, submitted it, ergo, presto, change-o, Mr. Merasty wins.
Your office, I believe, conducted that investigation and the report we got back I think was from the Chief Electoral Officer. Mr. Corbett, it might have been from you, but I think it was Elections Canada that reported back saying they found no evidence of wrongdoing and in fact they thought this was in effect almost a good thing because they were trying to encourage first nations participation in elections so having 103% was a good thing. Why was there more than 100%? They really couldn't enumerate; they didn't know how many people actually lived on the reserve and so to say there was 103% turnout was perhaps not accurate. And then to the point that every single ballot cast was in favour of the Liberal candidate, again, they didn't find anything unusual there, at least nothing to warrant recommending to the DPP a prosecution or a court case take place because Mr. Merasty was a well-known first nations chief, former chief, so therefore it's quite possible that 100% of the people casting ballots voted for him.
I didn't understand there was much of an investigation there. On the surface it would appear to me, and I think to most reasonable Canadians, that something fishy happened.
Can you recall that investigation, sir? And can you shed any light just to satisfy my curiosity, which has been bothering me for the last number of years?