Where's the fire, chief?

The Globe and Mail editorial today asks the question Why the hurry to pass the Fair Elections Act?. The question unfortunately might well be answered in this article in the Ottawa Citizen. It seems that the Commissioner of Canada Elections plans to wrap up his investigation of the electoral fraud perpetrated in the 2011 by March 31. He would then report his findings to the Chief Elections Officer, who could report them to Parliament and Canadians and go forward with any recommendations for prosecution to the Director of Public Prosecution. Unless, of course, the Canada Elections Act is changed by then and the Commissioner is made to report directly to the Director of Public Prosecution, who reports directly to the Minister of Justice/Solicitor General, where the report can be buried indefinitely, with Parliament and the Chief Elections Officer frozen out and Canadians left in the dark. According to James Sprague, former Senior General Counsel for Elections Canada, this is exactly what could happen.

"The new act would forbid the Commissioner of Canada Elections, Yves Cote — who is in charge of investigating election crime — from disclosing “any information relating to an investigation that comes to their knowledge in the exercise of their powers.”

Sprague says that means Canadians may never learn what investigators uncover about fraudulent and deceptive telephone calls in the past election."

A spokesman for Poilievre says no problem, Elections Canada investigators will still be filing court documents. Great, we get to learn about cases of electoral fraud through heavily redacted ITOs obtained kicking and screaming through Access to Information requests by valiant reporters. I feel safer now.

When considering to whom the Commissioner, who is the main enforcement officer and investigator of breaches under the Canada Elections Act, should report, it is probably wise to exclude the potential perpetrators of electoral fraud, i.e. the government in power. That would be like having the cops report to the Mafia. Better to have him report to an independent officer of Parliament, like the Chief Electoral Officer, who reports to Parliament as a whole, all parties, not just the government of the day.

But could the government be so bold as to resort to this bald faced abuse of power to quash the investigation? Is this not an all too obvious ploy? Well, we have seen what happens when this government feels cornered. When they faced a prospective non-confidence motion during their first term, they just shut down Parliament, an unprecedented, draconian attack on our democracy. When a Parliamentary Committee was getting too close to the truth on the government's knowledge of atrocities in Afghanistan, it shut Parliament down again! So, this is just the kind of thing they do when things get too hot.

So there is a race on, and that is why they are in such a hurry.