Canadian politics can be dirty & unethical

Five political dirty tricks we learned from the robocalls trial

Ontario election ‘Fraud Hotline’ launched by Liberals

Political fixer Jean Yves Lortie reveals his Mulroney-era dealings

How Emmanuella Lambropoulos scored an upset win in Saint-Laurent

Conservative party uncovers fraudulent members

The Canadian democratic politics that is taught to middle school students is as true to life as life on TV's Sesame Street can be compared to life in a public-housing project.

People who are familiar with how Canadian politics really work are not surprised to hear that  elections condo corporation are often are often tainted with dirty tricks, fraud and corruption.

Here are a few examples of dirty tricks and corruption in Canadian politics.

Trudeau Pot Plan


During the June 2014 federal by-election in Scarborough, the Conservatives were handing out literature suggesting that Justin Trudeau would corrupt children because he wants local stores to sell marijuana along with alcohol and cigarettes.

These leaflets were distributed by bulk mail to seniors homes in the riding. I am not sure if they were distributed in condos where some, or maybe most, residents may think this is a great idea.

The old photo of Justin standing in front of a cloud of marijuana smoke looking on at a young boy smoking a joint is incredibly campy. If this piece of trash could sway voters, then our political system may be beyond repair.

Just like the old Reefer Madness propaganda movie from the 1930's, this leaflet has a goofy charm that makes me laugh every time I see it.

I got a couple of these. If I get the chance, I will ask Justin to autograph one for me as it will make a great collector's item for a political science junkie.

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Five political dirty tricks we learned from the
robocalls trial
Annoying automated calls are the least of it when it comes to election time
CBC News
By Laura Payton
11 June 2014

Last week's trial of Michael Sona, who is charged with releasing a misleading robocall in Guelph, Ont., in 2011 to keep some voters from casting ballots, featured Conservative Party workers testifying about the pranks and tricks used during elections.

The tactics are used by all parties. Some of it is considered standard and expected. Other times it verges on nasty sabotage.

But just as notable was the attitude toward them by some campaign workers. While most Canadians would probably be surprised to hear about the tactics, most people who have worked in politics treat them as much more routine.

Witnesses at Sona's trial in Guelph, Ont., last week were probed by both the Crown and defence lawyers about the tactics employed by their campaign and the opposing Liberal campaign. Here are five tactics that came up at the trial, as well as some of the witnesses' reactions to them.

1. Phone bombs
A phone bomb means keeping the competition's phone ringing as much as possible on election day, making it harder for supporters and volunteers to get through to their office. Sona's lawyer, Norm Boxall, gave one witness the example of posting an online ad for free kittens along with the other candidate's campaign office phone number.

A related phone trick: continually faxing blank pages to their office.

John White, who was in charge of get-out-the-vote efforts for the Conservative campaign in Guelph, said there was "certainly a lot of phone mischief" during the lead-up to the 2011 election, which included a phone bomb that hit the Conservatives' office.

“Basically the phones just ring,” he said.

2. Challenging voter identification
When campaigns know they won't do well in a certain section of the riding, they might send volunteers to make sure Elections Canada officials are properly applying the rules that require voters to show ID — that is, they challenge people on their ID.

"I might want to send someone who's particularly gung-ho to a non-supportive poll," White said in his testimony.

"Scrutineers are the cornerstone of vote legitimacy," White added in an email to CBC News. "One of the jobs of a scrutineer is to ensure that a voter is legitimate, and that proper ID is being shown," he said, adding that he carefully trained partisan scrutineers in what is and isn't acceptable identification.

"If I can tell that a volunteer is particularly enthusiastic about ID inspection, it is in my strategic interest to put them in a poll that might not be as favourable.​"

3. Contrast calls
Some campaigns will use live callers or robocalls to distinguish between their position and their opponents'. Like contrast or negative ads, the calls could be seen as an attack on the person who is the subject of them.

In Guelph in 2011, the Conservative campaign was "livid," according to one witness, after the Liberal campaign sent out a robocall that said Conservative candidate Marty Burke was anti-abortion.

The recording featured a woman who used a fake name and didn't say she was calling from Liberal Frank Valeriote's campaign. "The race in Guelph is very close," the woman said in the message. "Vote strategically on Monday to protect our hard-earned rights from the Conservatives and Marty’s extreme views."

In that case, the call broke CRTC rules for automated calls, and the Guelph Liberal riding association was fined $4,900. The rules require that calls identify on whose behalf a call is made, provide call-back information and display the originating telephone number or an alternate number where the originator can be reached.

Valeriote said the campaign didn't know about some of the rules and apologized in 2012 for breaking them. But he said in an interview with CBC News that, other than adding the proper taglines, he wouldn't "have done anything differently."

White says the Conservative campaign lost some volunteers after the Liberals' call went out.

4. General pranks
Some of the other pranks that happen during election campaigns include putting gum in the locks of an opponent's campaign office doors, stealing signs and slashing tires.

In the 2011 federal race, at least two campaigns rented chicken costumes for a volunteer to wear to taunt an opponent (one campaign claimed the rental for a refund through Elections Canada).

Other candidates hired private security to guard their campaign offices the night before voting day.

5. Misleading calls
The misleading robocalls that are the subject of the allegations against Sona have become well-known since May 2, 2011, the date of the last federal election.

But the reaction from some of Sona's colleagues suggests they weren't as shocking to political enthusiasts as they were to those without campaign experience.

Mitchell Messom, who was a friend of Sona's and a former Conservative Party intern, told the court that Sona bragged to him about launching the robocall to misdirect voters and about covering his tracks. Crown prosecutor Croft Michaelson asked Messom what his reaction had been.

"You probably should shut the f--k up about this. You probably shouldn’t be telling everybody," Messom recalled telling Sona.

Sona says he had nothing to do with the misleading calls.

Another witness described campaign manager Ken Morgan realizing some of the Conservatives' supporters were getting misleading calls on election day that told them their polling station had moved, as well as a call that said the polls were closing early.

Andrew Prescott said Morgan approached him, gave him log-in information to a robocalling account, and said, "I need you to stop the dialing.”

According to Prescott, it was only after the Conservatives' supporters started getting misleading calls that Morgan had Prescott end them.

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Ontario election ‘Fraud Hotline’ launched by Liberals after party accuses PCs of voter suppression
National Post Wire Services
11 June 2014

The Liberal Party filed a complaint with Elections Ontario, and set up an “Election Fraud Hotline” Wednesday after the PCs sent out letters directing people to the wrong polling stations.

The Tories say the letters — sent to ridings in London and Ottawa — were just an innocent mistake. The Liberals, on the other hand, suggested it was a “deliberate attempt at voter suppression.”

“I don’t know why the Liberals are using the tactics that they are,” Tim Hudak said during a campaign stop in Mississauga, west of Toronto.

With less than 24 hours until the polls open, Hudak complained that Wynne accused him of being a dangerous threat to students, and the Liberals then released an “over the top” flyer that depicted him laughing as a hospital explodes in the background.

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Political fixer Jean Yves Lortie reveals his Mulroney-era dealings

CBC News By Wendy Mesley, Brigitte Noël 11 June 2014 Few Canadians know his name, and among political insiders he was known simply as the "Man with the Briefcase." But Jean Yves Lortie says $15 million to $20 million in cash made its way in and out of his briefcase during his time as a political operative from the late 1950s to his last political campaign in 1993. "[It was] cash, always cash," said the 80-year-old, detailing how he built a special compartment under his bed to handle the large bundles of bills.

In an extensive interview with CBC's Wendy Mesley, Lortie recently detailed how what he called "funny money" was given to him to help influence political campaigns at every level and of nearly every stripe.

He pulled outrageous stunts, one of which impacted Canadian history by helping Brian Mulroney become prime minister.

Lortie, who now lives in a retirement home in the north end of Montreal, decided to speak publicly for the first time after a religious reawakening.

"I was getting older, got sick and had a heart attack," Lortie told CBC News. "My family was religious and I was not too religious, but it came back to me."

After confessing to a sympathetic priest in the basement of his seniors’ home, he offered to help police in Quebec, who'd begun investigating a widespread corruption network.

The ‘go-to guy’ for elections

Former Montreal police chief Jacques Duchesneau, whose investigations at the provincial anti-corruption unit led to the Charbonneau commission, said Lortie was a treasure trove and arranged for him to testify behind closed doors to the inquiry.

Lortie says he came forward with his story because he's seeking redemption and is hoping for change. (CBC)

"I knew the name before I knew the person," said Duchesneau. "He was the go-to guy if you wanted to get elected."

Duchesneau said Lortie essentially taught the commission investigators how the political system "really works."

Lortie grew up in Montreal, one of 12 children. At a young age, he showed his natural inclination toward organizing, selling cookies to raise money for the poor and later becoming president of the Montreal Kinsmen club.

In Laval, a city identified in the Charbonneau commission as ground zero for much of the targeted corruption, Lortie learned the ins and outs of getting those who wanted government contracts to pay for political campaigns.

By the late 1970s, Lortie said he was partying every night.

"It was a good life at that time," said Lortie. "I was organizing and going out."

Often, he was swathed in gold chains and big fur coats, driving a pink Lincoln and sporting a permed hair-do that earned him the nickname the Poodle.

"It was unbelievable," said Odette Desjardins, Lortie's secretary for more than 30 years. "I was like, 'Jean Yves, take it off'."

People were noticing not only his frizzy hair, but also that mayors with his backing got elected. Lortie quickly moved up the ladder from municipal to provincial politics.

Everyone ‘was a candidate’

Lortie says that the Parti Québécois asked for his help in a scheme in 1981 to revive the nearly dead third provincial party, Union Nationale, in hopes it would split the federalist vote.

Polls at the time put then-premier Rene Levesque’s PQ neck-and-neck with Claude Ryan’s Liberals.

"I charge nothing. They pay me for the expenses," said Lortie. "I like to organize. I didn't need money. I did it for fun."

Lortie says the PQ covered his expenses to run the campaigns of 100 "candidates" for the Union Nationale. He enlisted his wife, employees in his office and even their relatives.

"In Chambly, my nephew was 18 years old, he was a candidate. My husband was a candidate. Nicole, [Lortie's wife], was a candidate," said his former secretary, Desjardins. "My brother was. Everyone in the office was a candidate."

Desjardins says none of them lived in the ridings they were representing.

Levesque won the 1981 election and ended up not needing the support of the revived Union Nationale, which didn’t win any seats.

The former premier's chief of staff at the time, Jean-Roch Boivin, told Radio-Canada that Levesque was approached by Union Nationale leader Roch La Salle, but says as far as he knows the “PQ never gave a cent to the UN.”

"I never got caught," said Lortie. "No journalist found out. Nobody found out."

Building Tory support in Quebec

Lortie, now a political operative in high demand, decided to join a group that wanted Brian Mulroney at the federal Progressive Conservative helm and had begun meeting secretly.

Back then, there was barely a Tory machine in Quebec. Lortie said he organized most of the 75 Quebec ridings, putting a kingpin in each to keep it under control. It gave him a lot of influence.


Jean Yves Lortie and Brian Mulroney at a Conservative dinner that Lortie helped organize. (Courtesy of Jean-Yves Lortie)

He drove around with a senior Tory bag man, who he says collected under the table cash for the Mulroney cause in the province, which Lortie says was typical of all the parties back then.

At the time, there were no limits on corporate donations, but they had to be declared. Lortie says some donations were declared, but most were not and that's why corporations wanted to operate on a cash-only basis.

Lortie says he never used cheques and jokes that he doesn't even know how to write them.

But Lortie's biggest political coup came in 1983, when he became one of the key strategists in the "Dump Clark" movement, which was fuelled in large part by Quebecers.

‘Paying all of the expenses’

Joe Clark had suffered several tumultuous years as Progressive Conservative leader. He was elected with a minority government in 1979, which fell nine months later after the Tories lost a budget confidence vote. In the subsequent election, Clark was defeated.

Three years later, a national PC convention was held in Winnipeg.

Jean Yves Lortie pulled outrageous stunts during his time in politics, one of which impacted Canadian history by helping Brian Mulroney become prime minister. (Peter Bregg/The Canadian Press)

Lortie says he re-enlisted many of the same players from his Union Nationale campaign and flew them to Winnipeg as delegates for the Tory convention. Among those recruited were also friends, family members and, of course, his longtime friend and former secretary, Desjardins.



Lortie says he brought almost half a million dollars to Winnipeg given to him by pro-Mulroney bagmen to cover the expenses of his 226 delegates, including himself.

He says he took about $300,000 in a briefcase, giving credence to his nickname, the Man with the Briefcase.

"I was paying all of the expenses," said Lortie. "The planes, the lunch, the hotel, buses."

Lortie says he divvied up an additional $150,000 among two assistants to spread the load. One of them, Gabriel Desjardins, told CBC he took the briefcase but never looked inside. 

Another of Lortie’s Mulroney delegates, René Gauthier, told CBC he saw big wads of bills in Lortie’s briefcase.

"I can tell you it was cash bills,” said Gauthier. “I remember that it had impressed me."

To prevent his group of delegates from becoming influenced by the Clark crew, Lortie says he kept them all together at a highway hotel out near the airport.

The plan was to sneak delegates into the convention at the last moment to vote for a leadership review. Clark had the support of two-thirds of the delegates but Lortie's recruits helped tip the vote enough for Clark to call for a leadership race.

At the leadership convention six months later in Ottawa, Mulroney won.

Senator Pierre Claude Nolin, appointed by Mulroney to the Red Chamber in 1993, said Lortie was in charge of a lot of the pro-Mulroney Quebec delegates, but denies seeing a briefcase full of cash.

Nolin says his claims sound like an exaggeration and insists any money spent would've followed the rules.

Schreiber questions resurface

Party mutinies happen all the time. What made this one so notorious were the rumours of foreign money behind the “Dump Clark” movement, including that a German arms broker had been a big donor.

Karlheinz Schreiber was a lobbyist for Airbus, which later sold the Mulroney government almost $2-billion worth of jets to Air Canada.

For years, Mulroney denied ever taking any money from Schreiber, and once stated under oath that he never "had any dealings" with the lobbyist. But in 2007, he admitted that a decade after the Winnipeg convention that Schreiber gave him $225,000 in cash ​

Schreiber has never clearly stated how much money he donated to the “Dump Clark” movement, once admitting to $25,000 and another time to $50,000. He's also hinted it could be much more.

There's no evidence Mulroney knew about any under-the-table donations for the Winnipeg convention. Mulroney has pointed to other times when Schreiber said he had no role at all.

Asked about Lortie’s claims, including the under-the-table cash, a spokesperson for the former prime minister said there would be no comment on Mulroney's behalf.

In a wide-ranging interview with Radio-Canada last year, Mulroney identified Lortie as the party's Quebec organizer but scoffed at the story of chartered planes arriving in Winnipeg in the middle of the night, deriding it as "folklore."

Lortie says Mulroney tried to create distance from him after the convention.

"They were frank with me [and] said, 'Maybe you have to be more in the back room'," said Lortie.

Lortie has come forward with his confession now seeking redemption and hoping for change.

"He just wanted to say, 'Things that I did, I am not happy about it and it is about time that society changes the way we elect people'," said Duchesneau. "So in a way he is a good citizen who has done bad."

Lortie says his confession is sincere.

"If it helps, I'm happy," he said. "I cannot do much more.”

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How Emmanuella Lambropoulos scored an upset win in Saint-Laurent
CBC News
09 March 2017

That a 26-year-old teacher beat out a seasoned provincial politician in the race to represent a Montreal federal Liberal stronghold came as a shock to many, including the teacher herself.

Emmanuella Lambropoulos secured the Liberal nomination to represent the Saint-Laurent riding in an upcoming byelection Wednesday night, and she didn't hide her amazement.

A clear message
Longtime Saint-Laurent borough Mayor Alan DeSousa said he wasn't surprised by the results.

DeSousa was barred from seeking the Liberal nomination in the riding and said he was never told why.

He said he believes his candidacy would have been too strong a threat to James's, so instead of having a tight race, the party removed her strongest competition.

Voters chose Lambropoulos to send the Liberals a message, DeSousa said.

"People felt that it was wrong, people felt that it was done unfairly, and people felt they wanted to say something about it, and the only avenue that they had open was the ballot they chose to vote on," he said.

"The process might be deemed to be open and fair and accessible, but in real life that is not the case …. The weight of the party is thrown behind that chosen candidate. The scales are not just tipped, they put elephants on the scales."

DeSousa said the party either should ensure the nominations process is truly open, or the prime minister should name candidates openly and take responsibility for their decisions.

"If we want to maintain the credibility of our democratic institutions, especially at a time where people tend to be quite cynical, we need to make sure we take all the means possible to encourage democratic participation, not exclude people."

"The process might be deemed to be open and fair and accessible, but in real life that is not the case …. The weight of the party is thrown behind that chosen candidate. The scales are not just tipped, they put elephants on the scales."

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Conservative party uncovers fraudulent members after O’Leary alleges vote-rigging
Toronto Star
By: The Canadian Press
17 March 2017

The federal Conservative party has removed 1,351 people from its membership rolls following a review sparked by leadership hopeful Kevin O’Leary’s accusation that one of his rivals has been engaging in widespread fraud and vote-rigging.

Those individuals will no longer be eligible to vote in the party’s leadership contest.

After an expedited review, the party says it found the now-cancelled memberships were purchased through two IP addresses and were not paid for by the individual members, contrary to party rules.

The party couldn’t determine which leadership campaign or campaigns were behind the scheme as the memberships were purchased anonymously through the party’s website.

The finding backs up O’Leary’s assertion late Thursday that unnamed backroom organizers were trying to buy the leadership race by using untraceable, prepaid credit cards to sign up fake members.

Over the last six months, the party says it has received 1,233 prepaid credit card transactions through its website, roughly half of which have been traced to the two IP addresses.

The development follows a spat between the two perceived front-runners in the Conservative leadership race over allegations of voter fraud.


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