Evidence of meeting #29 for Procedure and House Affairs in the 41st Parliament, 2nd Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was election.

A video is available from Parliament.

On the agenda

MPs speaking

Also speaking

Pierre Lortie  Senior Business Advisor, Dentons Canada, As an Individual
Duff Conacher  Co-Founder and Board Member, Democracy Watch
Miriam Fahmy  Director, Research and Publications, Institut du Nouveau Monde
Steven Shrybman  Board Member, Council of Canadians
Simon Rowland  Chief Executive Officer, Direct Leap Technologies Inc.

12:30 p.m.

NDP

Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON

You also indicated that there should be a system for streaming of records to a secure archiving facility at Elections Canada from the calling service providers. Would that be an easy thing to do, technologically?

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Direct Leap Technologies Inc.

Simon Rowland

You use what's called a CDR mediation server. They're available open source. It's open source software and runs on one server. It would be able to absorb all the records. It's a really easy project to set up. I could do it myself.

12:35 p.m.

NDP

Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON

If the Minister of State for Democratic Reform, who apparently has a background in the field of voter contact, had thought to ask people who know what they're doing technologically, would he have discovered that this would be easy to do?

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Direct Leap Technologies Inc.

Simon Rowland

It's so easy. You ask any telecom engineer to set up a CDR mediation server, every big carrier has this kind of infrastructure.

12:35 p.m.

NDP

Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON

Great.

At the moment Bill C-23 provides that calling service providers have to keep the data they're required to keep under this new scheme for one year. Certain data goes to the CRTC. We're not yet sure how long they have to keep it, because they haven't yet replied to my question on that, but we do know that audio recordings, scripts, and the phone numbers do not get sent to the CRTC under this, so they are subject to one year, after which calling service providers can delete them.

Would it be difficult for audio recordings, scripts, and the numbers called to be sent to the CRTC for them to keep, and for us to then require the CRTC to keep all this data for seven to ten years? Would that be a problem?

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Direct Leap Technologies Inc.

Simon Rowland

No, absolutely not.

It used to be expensive to do a 100% recording of a big call centre. It's not anymore. You needed it 10 or 20 years ago; now it's really simple. It's a common feature in call centre equipment. You can put in an extra box that does that, and that's not expensive. Setting up to submit those recordings automatically is a one-line command. You edit one file, hit enter, and then it will copy those files every five minutes, or what have you. It's very simple to do.

12:35 p.m.

NDP

Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON

Super.

This is all presuming that people are going to use this legitimate system set-up, but to your knowledge, is it possible for people operating a combination of offshore and using their own direct servers and proxy servers, if they have access to the right data, to be able to make calls without even going into the system? Yes or no?

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Direct Leap Technologies Inc.

Simon Rowland

To go into which system?

12:35 p.m.

NDP

Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON

Without going into this new registry system—

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Direct Leap Technologies Inc.

Simon Rowland

Yes. Of course. There's nothing to stop somebody from buying an auto-dialer product, installing it in an offshore server, connecting it to some foreign long-distance provider, and sending illegal phone calls to every....

My equipment.... I can literally phone or send a text message to everybody in the country. I'm not special in that way.

12:35 p.m.

NDP

Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON

Thank you.

Would you be able to provide us with any information about the extent of the robocall fraud in 2011? Is there any way to know what that was?

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Direct Leap Technologies Inc.

Simon Rowland

Absolutely.

I'm also the executive director of the Stop Election Fraud campaign. We've created a database of all the specific mentions, the specific allegations of fraud in public documents where the allegation of a fraudulent telephone call is tied to a specific riding.

There are 96 ridings identified in court documents with specific allegations of fraud, and an additional 78 ridings are mentioned in media reports with specific allegations of fraud. In total, from the 2011 election, there are 174 ridings where either a published media report or a court document that we processed has a specific allegation of fraud, using the telephone, attached to a riding.

12:35 p.m.

NDP

Craig Scott NDP Toronto—Danforth, ON

Could you supply this information?

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Direct Leap Technologies Inc.

Simon Rowland

Yes. I have a database of all of these complaints and I will submit it in a brief. Of course, Elections Canada released that out of the nearly 2,000 specific allegations of fraud—

12:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Joe Preston

Mr. Rowland, Mr. Scott is well past his time.

12:35 p.m.

Chief Executive Officer, Direct Leap Technologies Inc.

Simon Rowland

Oh, sorry.

12:35 p.m.

Conservative

The Chair Conservative Joe Preston

I caution all of you again about asking questions with two seconds left, but we'll go to Mr. Lamoureux now, and he won't do it, I know.

12:35 p.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I do want to pick up on that point. You said there were 174 ridings, and when you consider that there are 308 ridings, it's unbelievable in terms of the abuse that had taken place in the last federal election, and the degree to which Elections Canada had been contacted by, from what I understand, in one form or another, more than 30,000 Canadians.

Of course, the driving force behind this was the robocalls. The robocalls, or what have been known as the robocalls, are what have really angered a good number of Canadians from coast to coast to coast. In fact, I would suggest to you that it's one of the primary reasons we have this legislation before us.

Mr. Shrybman, in your presentation, in trying to get justice in this whole issue, because it all goes back, from my perspective, to the data bank.... The literally tens of thousands of mischievous phone calls, everything from calling late in the evening to get voters upset and to maybe not vote for a particular political party, to calling on inappropriate days during the week, to calling on election day telling the person to vote in another location...the purpose of that was all about voter suppression.

From the court documents—and you made it a part of your presentation—it seems that the Conservative Party data bank is the one that's been tied to the data bank that has most likely been used in terms of allowing those calls to be made. We don't know who made the calls, but are you fairly confident...? You've tabled the document with the quotes from Justice Mosley. Can you provide a further comment in terms of why it's so conclusive that it was the Conservative Party data bank that appears to be the data bank that was used to make these tens of thousands of calls?

12:40 p.m.

Board Member, Council of Canadians

Steven Shrybman

Well, I think the conclusions with respect to the data bank and the use of CIMS are Mr. Justice Mosley's. What he had to say, in addition to finding CIMS at the source of all of this, was that the campaign that he concluded took place during 2011 was centrally organized by someone who had access to the database and the authority to use the information from the database to carry something out on a much broader scale than Mr. Poutine, whoever he might be, carried out in Guelph.

I agree with you that it's all about the database, and there are some very simple ways for requiring those who keep these databases to be accountable for their use. One of them is to simply give the Commissioner of Canada Elections the power to compel production of database records.

The other, which I think is just as important, is to allow individual electors, in a claim under section 524, to actually name a political party as a defendant and to proceed by way of action, not just application, which means that they would have the right of discovery. In other words, in our case, we could have named the Conservative Party of Canada as a defendant, in addition to the individual MPs, compelled production of their database records, and had the opportunity to cross-examine those who have carriage of them. That would have told us who pulled the trigger on the smoking gun.

12:40 p.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

That's right.

So we have a good sense of which database was being used, the Conservative database, but you do not have the ability to find out who was responsible for that database to the degree to which you can compel them to come forward and provide names.

12:40 p.m.

Board Member, Council of Canadians

Steven Shrybman

Yes, or even if you can't identify who used it, you can identify that it was used, and that the political party involved didn't take the steps necessary in order to defend the database from misuse. There's nothing at all in the bill that addresses this.

One of the things that came to light during the case was that, during the election itself, Elections Canada officials started receiving complaints about voter suppression calls. They got on the phone and they talked to Mr. Hamilton, according to the ITOs, and to, I think, other people at the Conservative Party, and asked, “What's going on? We suspect that you're the source, or the party is the source, of these misdirecting calls.”

The party knew during the election that something was amiss. It's critical that steps be taken by political parties to guard their databases against misuse. There's nothing in the act that imposes that accountability.

12:45 p.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

When I think in terms of Mr. Mayrand, he indicated that if we do not change this legislation there should be no doubt that it will weaken the election law. Because without the ability to compel...and now more and more people are aware that they don't have to provide information...that, in fact, the chance of a future robocall is just as great as it is today. Now, those are somewhat my words too, but would you provide comment on that?

12:45 p.m.

Board Member, Council of Canadians

Steven Shrybman

I don't know if the chances of the robocall are greater, but I think what is true is that the likelihood of a voter fraud campaign coming to light is much less likely because the people who would know that it has taken place are muzzled under the bill.

It's not just the Chief Electoral Officer under section 18. You actually have to look at proposed subsection 510.1(1) as well, because the commissioner is precluded, arguably, from allowing an ITO filed in a court to be filed in any other way but under seal, which would mean that the discovery that Mr. Maher and Mr. McGregor made of an ITO filed in Edmonton in November 2011 would never have been known. This bill probably wouldn't be before us and no one would know that there was voter suppression during 2011 under these new rules.

12:45 p.m.

Liberal

Kevin Lamoureux Liberal Winnipeg North, MB

Without seeing an amendment that would allow for the compelling of a witness, do you believe that this legislation should even go forward?

12:45 p.m.

Board Member, Council of Canadians

Steven Shrybman

No we don't. That's not the only reform we would make to it. There are many other criticisms that others have offered that I think will suppress the vote in a more systematic way, rules around vouching. Others have spoken to those criticisms.