Clive Doucet

I had thought my days of giving  speeches on Parliament Hill were over and was surprised to find myself up there speaking.  I had this notion that I had had enough of politics and wanted to fade quietly into books and teaching.  I can’t say I was happy to be back on Parliament Hill at all.

The problem is this Robocall election fraud is so offensive, so dangerous to all that  I consider Canadian that it seems as if I had no choice.  My father fought in the second war to preserve and protect  fair elections and democratic values.  Many young men and women have been killed and injured in Afghanistan  to protect and preserve  free and fair elections at home and abroad, the equality of men and women, freedom of speech – the core values of what makes Canada, Canada.

I don’t agree with Elizabeth May and other politicians who think that  the whole matter is best dealt with through a public inquiry.   Public inquiries take years.  (How many decades did it take to connect Mr. Mulroney to the airbus bribes?)  Nor should anyone need a public inquiry to understand that the last election was a fraud and the present government is illegitimate.   I was asked by someone holding a camera afterwards – what about the Conservative who won by 15,000  votes?  Is his election a fraud?

I was astonished by the simple mindedness of the question.  By this calculus, it is okay to try and defraud the public as long as you don’t succeed, but  if you succeed in defrauding the public of a fair election as appears to be the case in ridings decided by a few dozen or a few hundred votes, then it’s not okay?  The answer is clear.  It’s wrong in either case.  Principles are no longer principles if they’re negotiable on a success scale.

The other thing that is now crystal clear is, it wasn’t a question of a couple of ridings here and there.  It was a massive attack on the Canadian electoral system.  Elections Canada is reporting 31,000 letters of complaint.  There were only about 6.5 thousand votes in total separating the winners from the losers in the 14  closest ridings.   31,000  complaints on one side of the scales, 6.5 thousand votes on the other.

In city politics we always considered that for every person who took the time to write one letter of complaint about an issue, there were  another 10 constituents who felt the same way, but couldn’t find the time to write.  Using this math, that’s 310,000 people across Canada who was affected by the Robocalls telling them their poll was closed.  I don’t need an enquiry to tell me that this invalidated the last election.  Nor that the only corrective measure possible is by-elections in all of the ridings affected.

I thought it might be useful to explain a little about how I came to support Nathan for the leadership of the NDP.   In the past, my support for NDP candidates has always been based on friendship and acquaintanceship.

I supported Jack Layton when he decided to run for the NDP leadership and Paul Dewar when he decided he would like to take a crack at Ottawa Centre.  Both of these decisions were very easy to make.  Jack and I worked together on many city issues when he was a Toronto City Councillor and President of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities; and I have been a long admirer of the Dewar family.  It was very easy to support Paul in his desire to become the new MP for Ottawa Centre.

My support for Nathan doesn’t come from a long acquaintanceship or any acquaintanceship at all.  He is a member of Parliament from north- west British Columbia and I’ve always been an Ottawa boy. Tonight is the first chance I’ve had to meet him in person.

So how is it I’ve come to support someone I’ve never met before?  The answer lies in our times.  We are living in unique political conditions.  There never has been anything like it before in Canada.  Remember most of the really important achievements of Canadian governments have been collaborative ones.

Medicare was the result of the NDP, the Liberals and the Progressive Conservatives supporting a national health program.  Canada’s stature as U.N. peace keeper was created by all parties.   We were famous for keeping the peace, not joining in wars.  It was John Diefenbaker, a progressive conservative who said ‘no to American missiles’ on Canadian soil.

At home, our governments had the idea that we should protect our small farmers with supply based management, protect our citizens with pensions in their elder years, that the environment mattered, that carrying a gun was a privilege, not a right, that prison should focus on rehabilitation not punishment.   I could spend a long time tonight listing the absolutely relentless attack on all of these achievements because the changes have been so numerous and profound.

Canada has never had religious based decision making.  Our politicians have been able to separate church and state. It was Pierre Trudeau, a Roman Catholic Prime Minister who created the freedom to choose legislation for women. With this government, all this has changed.  It is a government founded on blame, punishment and militarism, not generosity, optimism and conciliation.  This bullying is literally tearing apart the country.  Justin Trudeau’s outburst was a cri de Coeur that many of us were relieved to hear.  Finally a politician speaking with his heart not a political calculator.

When I decided to support Mr. Cullen, it was based on one very simple commitment he made early on in his campaign. He recognized how grave this threat was to our nation and was prepared to work with other parties to put Canada first to relieve the nation of this belief based government.

This is what Canadians are asking for and it’s not a lot. For just one election, they want federal candidates to park their partisan ambitions for their own party and put Canada first.  It’s not much.  One election.  One government to bring in election reform that will make a multi-party system an advantage not a liability.  Excepting the United States and Britain, this reform will put us in the same ballpark as every other modern democracy.  We are desperate for it.

Since 1988 when two out of three Canadians voted against free trade but Mr. Mulroney was elected with 40 per cent of the vote and brought in Free Trade, there has been a steady decline in participation in all federal elections.

Remember Mr. Mulroney had exactly the same reaction to his 40 per cent victory as Mr. Harper does today with his.  It was his way or the highway.  Nothing has changed except it has become worse.  It is clear now Mr. Harper has neither a popular majority, nor a Parliamentary majority. The most recent scandal, the Robo calls masquerading as legitimate information from election Canada on poll locations have invalidated every election that they were used in.   It is inconsequential who was responsible for them.  It could have been Santa Claus. What matters is that they were done because they compromised the ability of many Canadians to vote.  They were the electronic equivalent of sending thugs out to stop people from getting to the polls.

As the extent and the consequences of these automated calls begins to be understood I am confident that Parliament will have no choice but to demand by-elections.  The only other choice will be to withdraw from participating in a government that no longer has the authority to govern.  The seriousness of this situation cannot be overstated.  At the moment, we could have an illegally elected government commit the nation to another war.

The word unique is often misused in ordinary conversation.  It does not mean special.  It it means a singular event, an event like no other.  The Harper false minority-majority is a unique event.  Canadians have never seen anything like it before.

Nathan Cullen is the only candidate for the NDP leadership who seems to understand the gravity of the crisis Canada is presently facing and has been prepared to say at this moment in our history, ‘Canada must come first.’

Canadians deserve this kind of leader.  People are busy paying their mortgages, their taxes, raising their children, they elect and pay politicians to govern well and protect them from malfeasance.  We’re letting them down.  It is now more than 20 years, a clear majority of Canadians have been voting against their own government, not for it.  We have to change the electoral system so we can stop this and create true majorities and honest debate.

Harper is banking on the NDP and the Liberals never having the imagination to do anything but fight each other.  Each one hoping they will be more successful in the next election. Nor does he worry about election fraud.  Remember the last time Elections Canada had an election fraud scandal to deal with – the ‘in and out’ financial manipulation that allowed the Conservatives to spend more than the allowed limit on advertising?  They charged the Conservative Party $25,000.

I stand before you not as a former Ottawa City Councillor, not as a francophone or an anglophone but as a Canadian and I want to see that commitment to my country, its heritage and values reflected in our political leaders.  I believe that I can see it best in Nathan Cullen.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Nathan Cullen.

Another Parliamentary/Constitutional Crisis Coming at Canada.

What’s interesting about Robocon is how few journalists and how few members of Parliament  understand we are headed directly towards another parliamentary/constitutional crisis.  Everyone is plugged in twittering and facebooking and soundbiting but no one seems to know the ‘why’ of their daily sound bites anymore.

Hearing young parliamentarians fulminate about Robocon as a  ‘dirty trick’ or equating Bob Rae’s  humble apology for an employee doing something that was impolite but perfectly legal, broadcasting a public court order than Vic Taves wasn’t paying his support payments…as if this breach of parliamentary etiquette was on the same level as massive, coast to coast election fraud strikes me as dangerously Kafkaesque .

The bottom line here is quite simple.  The last election wasn’t valid and no investigation from Elections Canada can make it valid.  It wasn’t valid because thousands of people were denied the right to vote through a carefully planned, deliberate national attack  from a central source.  Further, the last election was a cliff hanger.  Many ridings were decided by only a few hundred votes, some by a few dozen.

Nor is there any way of knowing just how much distortion to the outcomes these false calls created except there must have been considerable damage for common sense tells one that the false Robocalls must have effected the outcome in many ridings and consequently the national result because all the close fights were targeted.

So Monsieur Governor General get ready because you are headed down the same trail as your predecessor.

Listening to the shouting match that passes for question period, it struck me that most of the members don’t understand the difference between a dirty trick and an illegal act.  There is a profound difference.  The former is unpleasant but part of the election game. Having been the victim of a clever, political dirty trick, I can’t say I’m a big fan of them, but no matter how crippling they might be, the candidate and his team is obliged to just suck it up and keep on trucking.  That’s what we did when a couple of men hired by no one, (again the mystery client), decided to do a telephone survey shortly after I declared to run for mayor.  But they didn’t release the poll results after they conducted the survey – which would have been fine.  They waited.  They waited six weeks.  By this time, it was September and my campaign was going very well.  Happily for me, the other progressive candidate had withdrawn.  My team was in full flight with weekly press conferences.   Money and people help was coming through the door.  It was looking good.  Then the poll was released.

It showed our campaign at 6 per cent.  The poll was widely reported in the media and it was devastating.   In September, we were expecting 14 or 15 per cent and building to move past the incumbent Mayor.    The slow release poll was sleazy, but it was entirely legal.  There’s nothing in the law that says you have to release a poll when it’s taken.  We could do nothing but work harder, which we did, but the reality was our campaign never recovered.  We finished at 14.7 per cent.

The Robo calls were not an unpleasant, ‘dirty trick’.  They were the electronic equivalent of hiring thugs to stop people from going to the polls.  They compromised people’s ability to vote.  They were illegal, were done nationally and invalidated the election in every riding where they were used.

The idea that ‘Elections Canada’ a little bureaucracy of the government of Canada is somehow going ‘to investigate’ and sort this out strikes me as ludicrous.  The ‘in and out’ financial scandal which permitted the Conservatives to spend more than they were legally entitled to resulted in a $25,000 fine. This is a government which is presently firing thousands of public servants and forces the most senior public servants to resign when they disagree with the government.  No wonder, the Prime Minister is so anxious to punt it from Parliament to the bureaucracy.

Imagine if you are about to go out the door to vote and you get a phone call from Elections Canada telling you the poll where you’ve always voted is closed.  It’s been moved to some place else in the city.  Are you going to find out where that new place is and go?  Maybe.  Maybe not.

Imagine when you get to the new poll, but there’s no poll there.  Are you going to take a chance and go back to your old poll?

Imagine you gave up and didn’t vote.  In 14 ridings there were probably enough of you to give a tiny plurality to the Harper candidate.  The bolded figures below show the margin of victory in 14 ridings.  They are tiny numbers.

This is why the last election was not valid.  The statistics below are from an article first published on rabble.ca (http://rabble.ca) By Cathryn Atkinson in May 9, 2011.  She writes without knowing about the robo calls purporting to be from Elections Canada: “The vote splitting is very disturbing. [Editor's note: This list does not include the numbers of registered voters in each riding who did not vote on May 2.]

Labrador (Newfoundland & Labrador) Conservatives/Liberals/Margin of Victory/*/NDP/Green Combined             4,234/4,003/231*/2,235

Nipissing-Timiskaming (Ontario) Conservatives/Liberals/Margin of Victory*/NDP/Green Combined                                                      15,507/15,493/14*/11,357

Bramalea-Gore-Malton (Ontario) Conservatives/NDP/Margin of Victory*/Lib/Green Combined                                                      19,907/19,369/538/18,149

Etobicoke Centre (Ontario) Conservatives/Liberals/Margin of Victory*/NDP/Green Combined                                                     21,661/21,635/26*/9,185

Saskatoon-Rosetown-Biggar (Saskatchewan) Conservatives/NDP/Margin of Victory*/Lib/Green Combined                 14,652/14,114/538*/1,323

Elmwood-Transcona (Manitoba) Conservatives/NDP/Margin of Victory*/Lib/Green Combined                                                      15,280/14,996/284*/2,678

Montmagny-L’islet-Kamouraska-Riveire-du-Loup (Quebec) Conservatives/NDP/Margin of Victory*/Lib/Green/Bloc Combined       17,220 17,110/110*/14,861

Lotbiniere-Chutes-de-la-Chaudiere (Quebec) Conservatives/NDP Margin of Victory*/Lib/Green/Bloc Combined          22,460/21,683/777*/12,183

Don Valley West (Ontario) Conservatives/Liberals/Margin of Victory*/NDP/Green Combined                                                         22,992/22,353/639*/7,983

Mississauga East-Cooksville (Ontario) Conservatives Liberals Margin of Victory*/NDP/Green Combined                  18,782 18,121/*661/9,989

Winnipeg South Centre (Manitoba) Conservatives/Liberals/Margin of Victory*/NDP/Green Combined                  15,468/14,772/696 */9,332

Yukon Conservatives/Liberals Margin of Victory*/NDP/Green Combined                                                                                                         5,422/5,290/132*/5,345

Desenthe-Missinippi-Churchill River (Saskatchewan) Conservatives/NDP/Margin of Victory*/Lib/Green Combined                     10,504/9,715/789*/1,706

Palliser (Saskatchewan) Conservatives/NDP/Margin of Victor*y/Lib/Green Combined                                                                                  15,850/15,084/766*/2,892

Total numbers for the 14 ridings: Conservatives/2nd place/Margin of Victory*/Rest of the left                                                                        219,939/213,738/6,201*/103,873

You’ll notice that these ridings are evenly distributed geographically throughout the country and the split affected the NDP and Liberals equally. Also, this list only represents the closest races. This is not a regional issue. It is indicative of what occurred throughout the country.”

Robogate has invalidated the Harper minority-majority.  Santa Claus could admit to making fake calls on behalf of Elections Canada and it wouldn’t change the fact that the last election was not valid.   Twelve, eighteen, now 30 ridings are involved.   Liberals and Ontario were the principal targets and this is where Harper won the last election.  Quebec went New Democrat but Ontario went Harper Conservative.

Many ridings were decided by the narrowest of margins, a dozen votes, a hundred votes.  Based on this, the Harper minority/majority is committing billions for war planes, threatening pensions, commiting Canada to a possible Iranian invasion and destabilizing the country internally by belief based policies which a majority of Canadians inside and outside of Quebec do not want.

It is clear now that this government has neither a popular mandate, nor a parliamentary mandate.    At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if it was a 19 year old elf at the helm of Robogate or Santa Claus himself, this is a democratic crisis for which there is only one correction.   Honest by-elections in the affected ridings.   Canadians should demand that Elections Canada not be allowed to ‘fine’ some hapless elf for this invalid election as they did after the ‘in and out’ financing scandal.  For this is a matter which touches the soul of the nation and upon which our claim to be a democratic nation depends.

It doesn’t matter who authorized the Robo calls in 12 to 18 federal ridings and it won’t matter if some minor Conservative functionary is eventually identified and fined as Mr. Harper states he is anxious to see.

What does matter is that the Robo calls reduced the participation rates in more than a dozen key ridings, the Conservative minority-majority depends on less.  Reducing  the participation rate, reduces the progressive vote across the board  but has less impact on the belief based vote upon which the Harper party depends.  It is very clear since Brian Mulroney won the 1988 election with 40 per cent of the vote which he decided was sufficient to endorse free trade whereas 60 per cent of Canadians had voted against free trade that the ensuing decline in voting federally has strongly advantaged belief based and far right voters (Harper supporters) who continue to elect minority majorities.

There is only one way this particular scandal can be corrected.  A by-election must be held in all the ridings where citizens received phone calls masquerading as an Elections Canada notification that their normal voting station had been changed.  Identifying  the hapless scapegoat is worse than meaningless because it will send the message that corrupt election practices work and voting itself is nothing more than a game for powerful interests.  This is  a fork in the road comparable to the  Ignatieff moment when the Liberal leader refused to vote against the Harper budget and chose partisan politics over co-operation and patriotism.

The question today is: Will Canada rise to this new challenge and demand that honest, transparent by by elections be held in the damaged federal ridings or will it all dissolve into another comic but helpless Mercer rant?  I fear for the latter as there has never been so much information available and so little understanding of what it all means.

I’ve been listening to the various candidates for the leadership and after much reflection, I’ve decided Nathan Cullen will have my vote.

Canadians were asked if you would support political cooperation between the NDP, Liberals and Greens to defeat the current government in the next election, and then pass electoral reform. Almost 10,000 responded. 95% said yes, with an astounding 72% “strongly agreeing”.[1]  http://www.leadnow.ca/en/donate

Nathan Cullen has stated he  is willing to work with other parties

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting a different result. We need to do things differently.  The Harper/Flanagan (HAF) team is taking apart Canada brick by brick. We used to count ourselves a Nordic nation on a par with Sweden, Norway, Denmark. Now we cannot compete with unemployed workers and subsidies in Muncie, Indiana.

Everywhere I go, I hear the alarm and a new HAF Horror story.

• They allowed 4 billion dollars in Nortel patents be sold out of the country.
• They support old technology slurry pipes for Chinese and Texan gain.
• They will spend 30 billion dollars for warplanes – to keep what peace?
• They withdraw from Kyoto.
• Now the results of torture are OK.
• End of gun registry, prison farms, wheat board.
• Cancellation of Stats Can long form.
• belief based policies, crime down, prisons up.
• To come – privatization Via Rail and CBC.
• Write in and add your own.

All the while, the civic liberties and not for profit organizations Canadians have developed and which have created a world reputation for sane, sensible caring actions are being defunded and marginalized.

The endgame of the HAF team has been very clear. “You won’t recognize Canada after I’m through with it.” And they are delivering.

What is happening to and in Canada is absolutely unique in the history of our country. There never has been anything like it and we must mobilize all our forces to oppose and replace it with a government that can govern as if our heritage, people, environment and future mattered.

We need leaders of the NDP, Liberals and Greens who feel the same way.

Nathan Cullen understands.  He gets my vote.

Clive Doucet