Five More Conservative MPs Investigated by RCMP for Privacy Violations

Further to my concern that the Conservatives are politicizing the RCMP, we can add five more of their MPs to the list being investigated by the force.

We know that former head of the RCMP, Giuliano Zaccardelli, meddled in the 2006 election that first brought Harper to power.

We know that the Cons are recruiting ex-officers to run for their party (including Kingston candidate Brian Abrams) and many have been elected. And we know that a uniformed officer was caught delivering campaign signs for Conservative MP Rob Clarke (himself ex-RCMP) and while the matter was supposed to be investigated, I found no evidence that it ever was.

We also know that the Conservatives are using their own powers to hinder the RCMP watchdog from doing his job. This is sad, because if for no other reason, a watchdog can help reassure Canadians that the agency is still a source of pride. We should never be put in this position to question their integrity. They must be beyond reproach.

However, we can now add five more Conservative MPs to the list being investigated: David Anderson, Randy Hoback, Andrew Scheer, Ed Komarnicki and Kevin Sorenson.

RCMP investigating alleged misuse of Wheat Board voters list
Farmers group suspects Conservative MPs used list to try to sway vote
January 9, 2009

The RCMP confirmed Friday it is looking into a complaint that a voters list used in the election of directors to the Canadian Wheat Board was misused. (The Conservatives and their lists)

The complaint, made last November, came from the National Farmers Union, a lobby group that supports the current marketing regime of the board.

The group alleges that five Conservative MPs may have used the voters list for last fall's election to send promotional material to people on it urging them to vote for candidates who wanted to get rid of the board's monopoly over export sales of wheat and barley.

The voters list is only supposed to be available to candidates, said the group's president, Stewart Wells.

The RCMP would not elaborate on the nature of their investigation and said in a news release that the complaint alleged the Wheat Board voters list was "improperly accessed and used by unauthorized personnel."

The RCMP did not identify any specific person as the subject of their investigation.

The board's marketing monopoly, under which farmers in western Canada must sell their wheat and barley to the board, has been an ongoing source of friction as farmers are divided on the value of the system.

Last fall, five farmer-elected positions on the 15-member board were contested.

The outcome of the vote was viewed as critical to the future of the wheat board because the election of pro-monopoly or anti-monopoly candidates would assure a majority of like-minded people could set policy.

Results, announced on Dec. 8, showed farmers selected enough candidates in favour of the board's marketing monopoly to preserve the status quo.

The election was closely followed by the Conservative federal government, which prefers removing monopoly powers from the agency.

Anti-monopoly pamphlets mailed outside MP's constituency

During the campaign period, pamphlets promoting the removal of monopoly powers were circulated by five Conservative MPs.

It is alleged the recipients of those mail-outs were the same people as appeared on the voters list for the election.

Suspicions arose when people outside the constituency of one of the MPs received a pamphlet.

Wells told CBC News he wants to know how MPs selected the people they targeted in their mail campaign.

"Did these Conservative MPs use permit book information or the voters list as the basis for their mailing list?" Wells asked Friday.

"That's the linchpin of the whole discussion. Because if there is some other explanation for how these MPs arrived at the mailing list they used, then the issue just evaporates."

Four of the five MPs involved are from Saskatchewan. They are David Anderson, Randy Hoback, Andrew Scheer and Ed Komarnicki. The fifth is Kevin Sorenson from Alberta.

Wells said that when the issue arose, there were differing accounts of how the mail-outs were handled.

"It seems that the only way to get to the truth is to ask the RCMP to investigate, and that is what we have done," he said.

The RCMP said its investigation will be done by a unit based in Regina.

But then further to this, the evidence of wrong doing becomes more evident. Like why were the same typos from the list included in the addressing of the Conservative pamphlets?

RCMP probe allegation that wheat board voter list was improperly accessed

REGINA — RCMP are investigating allegations that Conservative MPs interfered with Canadian Wheat Board director elections, the National Farmers Union said Friday.The RCMP said in a news release that it's probing complaints from the NFU alleging that a voters list for the wheat board was improperly accessed and used by unauthorized people.

An RCMP spokeswoman would not elaborate, but the union claims Conservative members of Parliament used the voters list to send letters to farmers."

In the Canadian Wheat Board elections that were run just before Christmas at the end of 2008, five Conservative MPs sent out letters ... telling farmers how to vote and who to vote for," NFU president Stewart Wells said. (and don't forget they used our tax dollars to do it)

"Of course that made farmers in Western Canada very angry."Wells said that according to the law governing the wheat board, the voters' list is only supposed to be available to candidates in an election.

The farmers union claims that the mailing list used by the MPs was identical to the voters' list.

Wells said none of the explanations offered up as to why there were similarities ring true." None of their explanations account for things like typos and company names that are included in these mailing addresses," he said."The mailing addresses used by the Conservative MPs includes these typos and these company names that they just really wouldn't have access to any other way."

The letters were sent by one MP from Alberta and four from Saskatchewan, including David Anderson, parliamentary secretary for the Canadian Wheat Board. They urged farmers to vote for candidates who favour ending the wheat board's grain marketing monopoly.

Am I on a Conservative Do Not Call List?

I was recently researching something else and came across an article from 2007, that dealt with the way that the Conservatives gather information for fundraising lists.

I found it highly 'Big Brotherish', but it reminded me of a telephone call I received a couple of weeks ago.

It was the same day that my mail included a taxpayer funded attack ad from Burlington MP Mike Wallace, on behalf of Brian Abrams; so I was already 'in a mood'.

However, I noticed when the call came in that the ID was 'CPC' (those morons don't realize that CPC was already taken by the Communist Party of Canada), so I gathered it was part of a blitz into Peter Milliken's territory. The gentleman on the other end of the line was friendly enough, when he asked to speak to my husband.

I explained that he wasn't home and he said that he just wanted to invite him to some kind of special event in Brockville that the police were putting on. Brockville? Burlington? I live in Kingston. Were these guys lost?

However, after grabbing a pen to jot down the information, the caller suddenly became rather brusk, stammering that he would call back later; clearly not wanting to speak with me.

I called the number right back and sure enough it was from the Brockville Conservative Constituency office, using their staff, paid for by us, to campaign for OUR conservative candidate ... in Kingston ... a Liberal riding. Boy when these guys want to rob us they go all out. And the police no less. Abrams is an ex-RCMP officer and presently the lawyer for the Kingston Police.

I wondered at that time if he knew how much I disliked this new so-called Conservative Party, but dismissed it as being just my imagination. However, after reading these articles concerning our invasion of privacy, I believe I may be on a list.

How cool is that? I've always wanted to be on a list.

I had sent Brian Abrams two emails last election campaign, and he didn't respond to either. Guess that tells you how good a job he'll do if, heaven forbid, he ever gets elected. He already has his hand in the public purse, and refuses to deal with prospective constituents who ask questions not on his list of things he's allowed to discuss and how he must handle them.

Tory database draws ire of privacy experts
October 18 2007
The Canadian Press

OTTAWA -- The federal Conservative party's central database is set up to track the confidential concerns of individual constituents without their knowledge or consent, says a former Tory MP.

The issue spilled onto the floor of the House of Commons on Thursday when Garth Turner, the expelled Tory-turned-Liberal MP, accused Prime Minister Stephen Harper of an "unethical invasion of Canadians' privacy.''

Privacy experts agree the practice is a clear breach of standard privacy ethics -- but probably not the law, because federal political parties fall into a legislative grey area.

A recent mailing by the prime minister to some Jewish households, and households with Jewish-sounding names, highlighted the micro targeting that sophisticated modern databases now facilitate.

The Rosh Hashanah greeting from Harper prompted several recipients to complain to the federal privacy commissioner, who has begun a preliminary inquiry.

It's cast a light on the 21st century art of political communication that may make some Canadians uneasy.

Virtually all federal and provincial parties have computerized databases, but the federal Conservatives are the acknowledged leader in the field of data management and mining.

Their fundraising efforts, based on small donations by thousands of donors, are unparalleled in federal politics.

Both the federal Liberals and the NDP have separate databases for constituency work and voter tracking. Data does not migrate between the two.

But the Conservatives use a single clearing house for all data collection, storage, datamining, mailing lists, voter tracking and any other partisan use such information may serve.

Turner, the Liberal maverick who was elected as a Conservative in 2006 and subsequently turfed from the party, says every Conservative MP is required to use something called CIMS, an acronym for Constituent Information Management System.

CIMS is used not only to track voter allegiance in a given riding -- something every political party attempts -- but also a host of other data gathered in the course of an MP's constituency office duties.

"Any time a constituent is engaged with the member of Parliament, they get zapped into the database,'' Turner said in an interview. "It's unethical and it's a shocking misuse of data. (guess I've been zapped)

"Because once you cotton on to what's going on here, it's not good constituency work at all to allow that data to fall into any kind of hands. But the party is desperate to get more and more data in there because the primary use is fundraising. The secondary use is voter tracking to get out the vote.''

Logging constituent files in a central party database that may also be used as part of election planning, fundraising, advertising strategy and policy deliberation appears to be clearly offside, two nationally respected privacy experts told The Canadian Press.

"If somebody contacts their MP because they're having a problem with their CPP benefit or their military pension, they don't expect to end up on a mailing list for a political party,'' said David Fraser, a Halifax lawyer who specializes in privacy issues with the firm McInnes Cooper.

"If they are going to end up on a mailing list, I think there's an ethical obligation to inform them and give them the opportunity to opt out.''

Michael Geist, a law professor who serves as the Canada research chair of Internet and e-commerce law at the University of Ottawa, agrees.

"When you're going to your local MP with a concern or a problem, there is a certain level of confidentiality,'' said Geist.

"The notion that it's simply a data point that gets used to characterize the particular constituent could have a bit of a chilling effect.''

Nonetheless, the Conservatives are likely within the letter of Canada's privacy laws, because they are neither a government agency nor considered a commercial operation.

Geist argues that political parties' fundraising efforts might make them liable under the commercial privacy law, known as PIPEDA, but Fraser says the legislation as written suggests otherwise.

"Generally, political parties aren't regulated with respect to how they collect, use and disclose personal information,'' said Fraser.

The Conservatives, who openly boasted about their state-of-the-art CIMS database after purchasing it in 2004, now refuse to discuss it.

"I will not talk about internal party databases,'' said party spokesman Ryan Sparrow. "I'm not disclosing what is in our database, who is in our database.''

When asked if Canadians can request to see their file on the CIMS database, Sparrow responded: "What would be their specific need to see?''

Asked a second time, Sparrow shut down the inquiry.

"I'm not going to help you with your story. It's internal party matters.''

The Liberal party says it voluntarily follows the principles of PIPEDA -- including showing any individual who asks what is on their file -- even though the act does not apply to political parties.

"We do not keep any information on individuals without their expressed consent,'' said Elizabeth Whiting, the party's communications director.

The NDP also said citizens are free to ask to see their file, although the party is not aware it has ever received such a request.

Fraser said political parties, regardless of the law, should follow the best-practice standards established by the Canadian Standards Association, upon which both federal privacy acts are based.

"Those best practices, which are almost universally recognized in most western democracies, would suggest that political parties should give notice, get consent and provide people access to their information,'' said Fraser.

"Whether or not they choose to do that would speak volumes to how they see themselves as responsible custodians of this personal information.''

I think I'm going to contact the Conservative Party and see if I am in their database? It feels kind of weird.

Cheryl Gallant also been in trouble using private passport information to send out birthday cards to her constituents. If we can't even be guaranteed that this government isn't using our passport information for political gain, how can we trust them with anything else?

BIG BROTHER IS DEFINITELY WATCHING US!!