Whodunit?

Well, lots of political hoopla on the weekend, with the Liberals holding their biennial policy convention, the NDP holding their national day of action, and the Conservative PM winning cases of beer from the Americans for Canada's hockey triumphs at the winter Olympics. I don't like this dynamic. Liberals and NDP fighting for attention with the Conservatives basking in the reflective glow of Olympic gold. It reminds me too much of the situation I described in 2011 in my "Don't Split the Vote Canada" post, which listed all the ridings where three way splits meant that a shift of just a few hundred votes could deliver victory.

That post had quite a lot of views actually, and I wouldn't be surprised to find out one day that it reads like a roadmap to electoral fraud in the 2011 election (I say "one day", because we still do not know all the ridings from which electoral fraud complaints have been received). Because it is in ridings like these that phone calls that misdirect just a few hundred voters to non-existent polling stations can yield rich rewards if they are targeted at voters who are known not to support the party making the calls. We know that this is exactly what happened in the 2011 election. A widespread, nationally organized campaign of misinformation aimed at keeping opposition voters away from the polls. That this has occurred has been established by a Federal Court judge and is not contested. But we still do not know who was behind the fraud. How can it be that four years later, the perpetrator or perpetrators of the largest, most serious case of electoral fraud in the country's history has not yet been identified and brought to justice? Is this not a country of laws? Is this not a law and order government? We can't get through another election without getting to the bottom of this question. It seems to me that those responsible for upholding our laws, ie the current government, should be at the forefront of this investigation. Why are they not leading the chase? And if the means currently available to get to the truth are not sufficient, why have increased powers not been legislated into effect so that we can once and for all charge and convict those responsible for these crimes?

Every day, in every forum, we should be asking the government Whodunit?