Outbound Predictive Dialer Featured Articles

Here’s a quandary: if you’re a political party being investigated by scandals that you used illegal robocalls to try to turn an election toward your favor, how do you prevent the political fallout? You simply write legislation forbidding the reporting of the results of the investigation. Easy-peasy!

If you don’t follow Canadian politics, you might not know that automated outbound telephone calls, or “robocalls,” became the subject of a scandal during the Canadian federal elections of 2011. The scandal involved a combination of robocalls and real-person calls made to Canadian voters, particularly those in the Ontario city of Guelph, that were clearly designed to suppress voting. The calls falsely informed voters that their voting locations had been changed.

After the election – when the complaints began pouring in --  the independent agency Elections Canada partnered with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) to open an investigation into the calls, which had been found to originate from a computer in the Guelph Conservative campaign office. The investigation is ongoing, and Elections Canada has yet to deliver its final report.

It may not get to do so. Legislation proposed by Canadian Conservatives may have the effect of prohibiting the organization from revealing the results of the investigation, according to a recent article on the news site Canada.com.

“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,’” according to the article’s author, Stephen Maher. 

Critics call the legislation an open door to political interference in investigations. The authors of the legislation dispute this was their intent.

A spokesperson for the minister of state for democratic reform, Pierre Poilievre, said that Elections Canada’s investigators will continue to be able to file court documents, and Marc Mayrand, the chief electoral officer, will still report to Parliament, but the proposed legislation would prevent the commissioner from discussing investigations with Elections Canada, so Mayrand would not be able to report on the investigators’ work, the article said.