Who’s behind robocalls that misled Canadian lefties from voting? Conservative supporter Pierre Poutine!

You’ve got to be kidding me. It’s almost like self-parody.

Court documents show a cellphone in the robocalls affair was registered to Pierre Poutine of Separatist Street in Joliette, Que.

Elections Canada’s chief investigator says the clearly fake name was likely used to cover the tracks of whoever was behind the misleading and harassing phone calls to voters in Guelph, Ont., during the last federal election campaign.

Voters in Guelph reported getting calls from a phone number with a 450 area code directing them to the wrong polling station. Elections Canada investigator Al Mathews obtained phone records showing the number behind the Guelph calls was the same one registered to “Pierre Poutine.”

“I think it is reasonable to believe that some sort of consumer relationship existed between the Marty Burke Conservative campaign in Guelph for the 41st general election and RackNine Inc., or between certain Burke campaign workers and RackNine Inc.,” Mathews concludes. He also suggests the relationship was related to the misleading calls made to Guelph area electors, “which they perceived as coming from the phone number 450-760-7746.”

RackNine has confirmed someone used its automated dialling service to make the phoney calls. The company insists it did nothing wrong and that it is helping Elections Canada and the police in their investigation.

It’s like these Conservatives knew someone would backtrack on them, and they just had to thumb their noses. They are, of course, denying everything, which is SOP for the CPC when it comes to the dirty tricks they’ve been engaging in nation-wide in order to steal an election that might otherwise have been theirs regardless.

Let it be known that the Conservatives wanted their majority government so badly they were willing to steal this past election, regardless of whether they needed to or not. They wanted their majority government so badly, so they could tear the country apart, that they were willing to lie, cheat and steal. One would think that alone would disqualify them from power. But sadly, now that they HAVE power, nothing short of civil war or a rogue Governor General would break their party before their four years are up. (And yes, this also means the fixed election dates promise is very likely scuttled.)

I’ve heaped all sorts of acrimony on those who didn’t vote this past election, but it might not have been merited in every case, because the blackguards running this country were willing to cheat to get power. We don’t know what percentage of the electorate was dissuaded from voting by being fed misinformation by robocalls by Pierre Poutine of Seperatist Street, and other such cheating by the Tories. And while it’s pretty damned obvious there’s no such person as this Pierre Poutine, it’s also obvious how much disdain the folks responsible for this underhanded scheme have for Canadian culture in general, not only by virtue of the name and street address of this fictional character, but by even pulling such crooked tactics to begin with.

Yes, poutine is good. Dirty tricks co-opting the good name of poutine is bad. And dirty tricks that subvert democracy in the name of bending a country to the will of a very tiny fraction of the populace is very bad. Very bad indeed.

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Who’s behind robocalls that misled Canadian lefties from voting? Conservative supporter Pierre Poutine!
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22 thoughts on “Who’s behind robocalls that misled Canadian lefties from voting? Conservative supporter Pierre Poutine!

  1. 1

    I wonder if Vladimir Putin will be phoning Harper for tips. “Your robocall tactic? Amazing. Why didn’t I think of that?” Of course if the party had any brains they used a sufficient number of cutouts to make proving the party bosses knew anything about it very hard.

  2. 3

    What’s really sad is that here in the USA, the Republicans have been pulling this stuff for years and nobody seems to care. At least Canada is investigating it.

  3. 4

    (And yes, this also means the fixed election dates promise is very likely scuttled.)

    You just remembered that wrong. He said “fixed election>. That was the promise, which has been kept.

    The word, “dates”? That was not meant to be factual.

  4. 6

    The only good thong I can say about it is that they knew it was wrong. Otherwise, they would not have tried to hide it. There is a conscience in there somewhere. It’s just buried very very deep.

  5. 7

    Those disgusting excuses for human beings can’t believe that anyone would be good, honest or honourable so they have to do it to us before we do it to them. It all makes sense. A party that’s always on the alert for spying, fake letters, fraud, and dirty tricks is a party that’s spying, faking letters, producing frauds, and perpetrating dirty tricks.

    Incidentally, I found a crowd map where Canadians can comment on why they vote:

    http://ivotebecause.ca/

  6. 8

    Did anybody really expect anything else from the likes of Harper and his cronies?
    Honesty? Democracy? They are after power to turn Canada in to a US colony. And they will succeed. Just check their new initiatives regarding criminal law.
    This will break an already stretched “justice” system meaning fast tracking of court cases and the likely hood of the privatization ala US of the prison system. Welcome to the Tory nightmare of “less” government.
    There will be less government – for those in need, for the elderly, for schools and university.
    After all – wage slaves as imagined by conservative think tanks do not need extensive education.

  7. 9

    Something that’s been missed by the media is that Pierre Poutine is the name of a poutine restaurant in Guelph.

    I know Pierre Poutine. He’s originally a Québécois but now lives in Nigeria. I’m involved in a deal with him which will net me about $4 million.

  8. Rrr
    10

    Y’all are missing the point, I think. The REAL objective seems to be to form a new Union between Russia, the biggest country in the world, and Canada, the second biggest. Now, won’t that be cool?

    Incidentally, Russia put in president putin today. Putin, poutine — does it matter how you spell it? Just don’t let it get burned or things may become real messy.

  9. 11

    I’m feeling particularly cynical about this today. The Conservatives have spent the last 20 years screaming about left-wing bias to the point where most of the Canadian mainstream media is afraid to draw their ire by calling the CPC on their bullshit.

    Couple that with Harper’s obvious willingness to abuse his power in an attempt to decimate his opponents, and I doubt Elections Canada is going to do more than present a token response to this election fraud.

    The Cons will get away with this, which means the Canadian political scene is about to become a lot more partisan and reliant on dirty tricks, since the Liberals and NDP will have to adopt the Conservative campaigning method in order to “remain competitive”. Voters will become even more alienated, which is good for the CPC, based on their voting block.

    This country is fucked.

  10. 12

    It’s only fitting that, after Joe Six-Pack figured so prominently in the 2008 US presidential election, Pierre Poutine would be a major player in the 2011 Canadian election.

  11. 15

    None your (email addy: [email protected]), which “journalist” are you referring to exactly?

    For what it’s worth, the chain of evidence is that a) the Guelph Tory campaign manager is the same guy who once tried to grab a ballot box claiming it’s illegal, b) has offered his resignation and said resignation was accepted, c) the campaigns were registered to “Pierre Poutine of Separatist St.”, which as william pointed out @5 is the name of a local Guelph restaurant; d) the campaign was run through Racknine, the same outbound call centre service used by nine other Conservative campaigns; e) the campaign targeted liberal (small-L) voters.

    And even if it was Elections Canada’s fault, as the Tories maintain, then surely the CPC would agree that a byelection is not only necessary but mandatory in order to maintain even the remotest semblance that the seat is actually theirs.

  12. 17

    Grab None’s IP address, Jason. Maybe it came from the House Of Commons like Vikileaks. Perhaps you could arrange for the dismissal of a CPC staffer, who’s spending government time trolling blogs critical of El Presidente Harper.

  13. 18

    The Conservatives have spent the last 20 years screaming about left-wing bias to the point where most of the Canadian mainstream media is afraid to draw their ire by calling the CPC on their bullshit.

    20 years ago was 1992. I don’t think the Cons really went with that particular tack in earnest until 2002 or so. ISTM it’s more of the same castration that media everywhere have undergone since the “war on terror” started. Electoral irregularities that put the “right” people into office are seldom ever covered.

    Per #8:

    Honesty? Democracy? They are after power to turn Canada in to a US colony. And they will succeed. Just check their new initiatives regarding criminal law.

    Which certainly will satisfy the relevant parties that Harper & co are the “right” people.

    The Cons will get away with this, which means the Canadian political scene is about to become a lot more partisan and reliant on dirty tricks, since the Liberals and NDP will have to adopt the Conservative campaigning method in order to “remain competitive”.

    Only if they “modernize” their policy stances to make it very clear that they, too, are the “right” people to hold office. If they retain anything at all of their former character, expect a win on their part to be officially nullified if a single constituent sneezes while voting.

  14. 19

    20 years ago was 1992. I don’t think the Cons really went with that particular tack in earnest until 2002 or so. ISTM it’s more of the same castration that media everywhere have undergone since the “war on terror” started. Electoral irregularities that put the “right” people into office are seldom ever covered.

    I used to have a collection of BC Report and Alberta Report magazines (the Sun TV of the early ’90s) that I read when I was a member of the Young Reformers back at that time. I can assure you that they vocalized their hate of the CBC and the rest of the mainstream Canadian media every bit as often and loudly as they do now. Not that I’m proud of it, but I voted Reform Party in 1993.

    They’ve been playing the long game, and moved from a bunch of fringe lunatics to majority governing party in those 20 years.

  15. 20

    None your (email addy: [email protected]), which “journalist” are you referring to exactly?

    For what it’s worth, the chain of evidence is that a) the Guelph Tory campaign manager is the same guy who once tried to grab a ballot box claiming it’s illegal, b) has offered his resignation and said resignation was accepted, c) the campaigns were registered to “Pierre Poutine of Separatist St.”, which as william pointed out @5 is the name of a local Guelph restaurant; d) the campaign was run through Racknine, the same outbound call centre service used by nine other Conservative campaigns; e) the campaign targeted liberal (small-L) voters.

    And even if it was Elections Canada’s fault, as the Tories maintain, then surely the CPC would agree that a byelection is not only necessary but mandatory in order to maintain even the remotest semblance that the seat is actually theirs.

    The Guelph riding isn’t a Conservative seat, so what are you trying to say in that last paragraph.

  16. 21

    This is getting really ugly and really interesting. To my way of thinking the heroine of the drama so far is Annette Degagne who worked (works?)at the Thunder Bay call centre of the Conservative Party’s Responsive Marketing Group, RMG, a big money maker for the Harper thugs and a devotee of the narrowcasting of messages such as those that pointed non-Conservative Canadians over 60 towards disenfranchisement and non-existent polls. Annette had enough of the fraud she was witnessing from her workers. She informed her supervisor AND the RCMP AND Elections Canada. Of course the RCMP became Conservative politicians in 2006 and they spit on the law to give a pass to big time criminals like Harper every day. Elections Canada was in cloud gaga land. But as far as I can see Annette is sticking to her story. We have a smoking gun. Bill Good on CKNW hosted Harper on the air on Election Day when he declared “vote Conservative.” The PM blatently broke the law in full view. Good clearly criminalized himself too. What a bastion of thieves and cut throats run this degraded place. Cry the beloved country.

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