Mr. Speaker, on April 30, 2011, the Liberal Party's national campaign held a secret training session for Liberal campaign workers to teach them how to use robocalls. Hours later, the phones in Guelph were ringing off the hook with a Liberal dirty trick. Someone was calling residents with an anonymous and misleading message from a fictional character named Laurie MacDonald. These were fake Liberal calls from a fake phone number from a fake Liberal volunteer using a fake name.
The member for Guelph has admitted that he paid for these illegal and unethical phone calls to fight the NDP surge. If these calls were simply an “oversight”, why did he wait until he was about to get caught to come forward? It just does not add up.
We know the opposition spent millions of dollars on hundreds of thousands of phone calls during the last election. How many other Canadian households did it target with this illegal campaign?