Findings related to the Conservative Party in Mr. Justice Mosley’s ruling in the Council of Canadians case

Mr. Justice Mosley found “that the most likely source of the information used to make the misleading calls was the CIMS database maintained and controlled by the CPC, accessed for that purpose by a person or persons currently unknown to this Court. There is no evidence to indicate that the use of the CIMS database in this manner was approved or condoned by the CPC. Rather the evidence points to elaborate efforts to conceal the identity of those accessing the database and arranging for the calls to be made.”

Mr. Justice Mosley was clearly angered by the numerous efforts by the Conservative Party lawyer, Arthur Hamilton, to obstruct the case. Even worse, Mr. Justice Mosley found that Hamilton had been notified on Election Day of the attempts to defraud voters and had ignored the problem. Here are some of the judge’s findings about the conduct of the Conservative Party of Canada (CPC) and its lawyer:

On a CPC motion to strike out an affidavit: “The motion was, in my view, an attempt to derail these applications before they could be heard and determined on the merits and was brought without justification.”

On a CPC motion that the applicants missed a time deadline (statute limit): “Where electoral fraud is alleged and substantiated, the Court should be reluctant to deny the applicants a hearing on what may appear to be a technical, procedural ground advanced by a party that has an interest in preserving the result.”

“Despite the obvious public interest in getting to the bottom of the allegations, the CPC made little effort to assist with the investigation at the outset despite early requests. I note that counsel for the CPC was informed while the election was taking place that the calls about polling station changes were improper. While it was begrudgingly conceded during oral argument that what occurred was ‘absolutely outrageous’, the record indicates that the stance taken by the respondent (CPC) MPs from the outset was to block these proceedings by any means…” (emphasis added)

In this issue…