The Politics of Opportunity: Election Tampering

A CULTURE OF DEFIANCE: History of the Reform-Conservative Party of Canada

A vote of non-confidence on November 28, 2005, resulted in the fall of Paul Martin's government and the beginning of an election campaign. At the time the Liberals were running about 10 points ahead of Harper's Conservative-Alliance coalition.

On the same day, NDP finance critic, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, sent a letter to the RCMP requesting an investigation into allegations that some people had made stock market gains through advance knowledge of the federal government's decision not to tax income trusts. "The media has reported a sharp and unusual increase of trading in income trust investments in the hours immediately preceding the Finance Minister's [Ralph Goodale] announcement. There has been speculation in the press that a leak about the government's decision could be responsible."(1)

What happened next continues to remain a mystery, but what is clear is that members of the RCMP were involved in election tampering, that went straight to their former boss, Giuliano Zaccardelli.

Zaccardelli responded to the NDP MP's inquiry, suggesting that they had already started an investigation. But her offices were closed for the holidays so he took the unprecedented step of calling her personally to make sure that she read the letter. Wasylycia-Leis not only posted it on her website, but also called a press conference to announce that the Liberals were the subject of an RCMP investigation. This caused an immediate drop in Liberal popularity (2), a surge in Conservative momentum, and was instrumental in Harper becoming prime minister.

And to make matters worse, the RCMP actually mentioned Liberal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale by name, a man with a squeaky clean reputation, and though he was cleared of any wrong doing, that cloud continues to hang over his head, as evidenced by comments posted now and then by Harper supporters.

So Why Did Giuliano Zaccardelli Do It?

Lawrence Martin believes that the RCMP chief had an axe to grind with Paul Martin.

The Mountie intrusion into the election campaign led to accusations that the force was biased against the Martin Liberals. This was a telling piece of irony for the Conservatives, who had long suspected the Mounties of being too close to Jean Chretien. During the uproar over alleged conflicts of interest in the Shawinigate controversy, Conservatives had howled in protest at how the Mounties appeared to be backing Chretien at every turn.

Giuliano Zaccardelli, then the RCMP commissioner, enjoyed a close working relationship with Chretien. One time at an American embassy reception he told a journalist just how that relationship had benefited him. He described how he was now a celebrated figure in his Italian home town because of his status as commissioner. What had helped him succeed, he explained, was that he had backed the right Liberal horse. His fellow Italian, Liberal MP Maurizio Bevilacqua, didn't enjoy the same status in his home country, Zaccardelli said, because he had sided with the wrong guy—Paul Martin. (3)

Paul Martin recognized the animosity but believed that it was because Zaccardelli was upset when he called an inquiry into the Arar affair that put him him right in the thick of it. He describes the events:

The decisive moment in the campaign came three days after Christmas. I was in a hotel room in Halifax when Alex Himelfarb reached me by phone with the news. I realized the significance right away. What had happened was unbelievable and built on a falsehood, as subsequent events have proven. It was nonetheless devastating.

Guiliano Zaccardelli, the then still-respected commissioner of the RCMP, had written a letter before Christmas to the NDP'S finance critic, Judy Wasylycia-Leis, saying that the RCMP had launched a criminal investigation into the possible leak of a planned change on the taxation of income trusts announced by Ralph Goodale the previous month.

There is no doubt in my mind that what Zaccardelli did was improper. The only question there can be about the incident is whether it was an act of ineptitude or of malice aforethought. My own view is that no one can be that inept ... Was it my decision to call the Arar inquiry? (4)

He also hints that the Conservatives may have been involved, which gains credibility given the actions of the Harper government when they came to power. Maybe they just owed Zaccardelli a debt, but they went well beyond simple gratitude, raising even more questions about the entire affair.

Following the election, there was no immediate call for an inquiry. For the defeated Liberals to have demanded one would have appeared self-serving. The NDP had played the role of willing enabler for the RCMP plan, so it was not keen to demand accountability. And Prime Minister Stephen Harper, unlike Paul Martin and his zeal to appoint Judge Gomery to uncover his own party's scandal, had no interest in investigating a scandal that had helped the Conservatives win.

On September 18, 2oo6, the inquiry Paul Martin had launched into the illegal rendition of Maher Arar to Syria by U.S. authorities, headed by Mr. Justice Dennis O'Connor, reported its findings. Maher Arar was completely exonerated, but the O'Connor Commission found that the RCMP had passed incorrect information about Arar to the Americans. It found that Commissioner Zaccardelli had misinformed the solicitor general both about the likelihood that Arar was tortured, as well as darkly hinting that Arar had real terrorist links. Heads should have rolled, but Commissioner Zaccardelli kept his and he was not asked to submit his resignation when the report was issued. (1)

Instead the Harper government built a wall around the commissioner, and went to extraordinary lengths to protect him.

Within days, there were allegations that the Prime Minister's Office and the office of Minister of Public Safety Stockwell Day had ordered the commissioner not to appear before the Commons Public Safety and National Security Committee. In the House of Commons on September 24, 2006, interim Leader of the Opposition Bill Graham repeated former RCMP Commissioner Norman Inkster's claim that Zaccardelli was being muzzled by the Harper government. It was a subject of much media speculation when Zaccardelli refused to appear before the House Committee. A confidante of Zaccardelli approached the media to assert that Stockwell Day had written Zaccardelli to instruct him to avoid the House Committee. (1)

When it was later determined that he had lied under oath he was forced to resign but never really punished. (5) And even after that his name came up once more in a criminal investigation over the misuse of pension funds. And again the Harper government stepped in:

The next troubling scandal was over the misuse of RCMP pension funds. A month before Commissioner Zaccardelli resigned, an RCMP whistle-blower, Staff Sergeant Ron Lewis, sent a package to every member of the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons. The package documented allegations of RCMP senior officers misusing RCMP pension funds. (1)

And when a House Committee was formed to look into the matter:

The members of the committee voted down proceeding with an investigation. To be more precise, the five Conservative members of the committee acted as a group to block any investigation. And they did so repeatedly from the fall of 2006 until they lost by one vote and the RCMP whistle-blowers finally appeared in April 2007 ... At every key point when the committee voted to deal with the issue, they [the Conservatives] blocked it or tried to block it. The Conservative committee members also blocked pursuing reports from the auditor general that all was not well within the RCMP. (1)

In a column Don Martin wrote:

It's incredible and inexplicable why a government under Prime Minister Stephen Harper, which wraps itself in the uniform of aggressive law and order, would vote repeatedly to deny RCMP officers access to the spot-light when they were willing to risk their careers telling a disquieting truth . . . there's no sensible explanation for why Conservatives, who usually act in unison in committees, would circle the wagons against RCMP insiders seeking to blow the whistle ... (6)

This was a very serious situation. We have our national police force getting involved in an election campaign, essentially winning it for the Conservatives. And we have those same Conservatives breaking every rule in the book to make sure that the head of that police force does not have to answer to serious allegations against him in both a torture case and the possible misappropriation of funds. (7) Things like this happen in third world dictatorships, not western democracies.

And where is Giuliano Zaccardelli now? Someone obviously pulled some strings because he is now a senior official with Interpol in Lyons, France, heading its “OASIS Africa” program which aims to help African police forces more effectively combat international crime.(8) Unbelievable.

Previous:

The Politics of Contempt: The Nixon-Harper Ticket

The Politics of Hate: Where Will it Lead?

The Politics of Conceit: "Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better"

Sources:

1. Losing Confidence: Power, Politics and Crisis in Canadians Democracy, By Elizabeth May, McClelland & Stewart, 2009, ISBN: 978-0-7710-5760-1, Pg. 132-147

2. Income trust a major campaign turning point, Canadian Press, January 22, 2006

3. Harperland:The Politics of Control, By Lawrence Martin, Viking Press, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-670-06517-2, Pg. 30

4. Hell or High Water: My Life in and Out of Politics, By Paul Martin, McClelland & Stewart, 2008, ISBN: 978-0-7710-5692-5

5. RCMP's Zaccardelli resigns over Arar testimony, By CTV News Staff, December 6 2006

6. Block Party? No Clear Explanation Why Tories Obstructed RCMP Whistle Blower, By Don Martin, National Post, April 3, 2007

7. RCMP officers accuse top ranks of coverup, CBC News, March 28, 2007

8. Wikipedia

Did RCMP Boss Giuliano Zaccardelli Meddle in 2006 Election

The questions are mounting as to how the Conservatives won the 2006 election.

We know of the nefarious religious organizations that both laundered money and campaigned for the party, believing they would realize their social conservative agenda.

The "In and Out" scandal revealed how the Conservatives spent more on advertising than the legal limit, thereby giving them an unfair advantage. But more importantly they (allegedly) engaged in fraud by claiming credits that they weren't entitled to. That case is still before the courts once the silly counter suit is taken care of.

Then of course, there is the question of whether or not RCMP boss, Giuliano Zaccardelli, helped to sway voters by announcing a probe into Liberal misdoings during a critical stage of the election campaign. All of these charges were false, but still tipped the scales in favour of the Cons. And of course why announce these investigations at all during an election? The mounties are supposed to have a strong code of ethics when it comes to partisan politics.

During the 2008 election campaign, when the polls were shifting in favour of the Liberals, the Conservatives had Mike Duffy and Steve Murphy do their dirty work. Both men have since been charged with ethics violations. Sadly, there was no senate seat for Giuliano Zaccardelli, poor fellow.

Greens seek probe into RCMP action
Deputy commissioner found in contempt of Parliament
Toronto Star
Apr 11, 2008
Richard Brennan
OTTAWA BUREAU

OTTAWA–Green Leader Elizabeth May says Canada is not a "banana republic" where the state police can be allowed to influence the outcome of a federal election.

May yesterday demanded a full public inquiry into alleged interference in the 2006 federal election by the RCMP and its former commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli, who, in the midst of the campaign, named then-Liberal finance minister Ralph Goodale in a criminal probe.

"The Green party is going where other political parties fear to tread. We need a full investigation into what occurred in the 2006 election as a result of RCMP interference," she said. "Canadians need to know before the next federal election campaign that our elections are free of interference by the state police. Anything less is an assault and an affront to democracy."

Goodale was accused by the New Democratic Party of leaking sensitive financial information about income trusts, and many believe the controversy contributed to the Liberals' election loss. Goodale was ultimately cleared of wrongdoing.

In his recent report on the affair, RCMP public complaints commissioner Paul Kennedy said Zaccardelli's decision to name Goodale likely influenced the election. However, he said there was no evidence Zaccardelli was intentionally meddling in the vote.

May said if what happened during the election campaign "had occurred in a developing country, we would be quick to conclude it was a banana republic. Canadians must demand a full inquiry to get to the bottom of this extremely serious interference in our democracy."

Zaccardelli could not be reached for comment.

Canada: Report whitewashes federal police’s intervention in 2006 elections
By Guy Charron
May 22, 2008

The Commission for Public Complaints Against the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) published March 31 the results of its inquiry into the role Canada’s national police played in the January 2006 federal election. Public Complaints Commissioner Paul Kennedy determined that the then head of the RCMP, Giuliano Zaccardelli, personally insisted upon publicly implicating the finance minister of the incumbent Liberal government in a police investigation into insider-trading allegations.

The report conceded that the RCMP’s revelation that it was conducting a criminal investigation of Finance Ministry and possibly other government officials was unusual, all the more so since the country was in the midst of an election campaign, and termed unprecedented Zaccardelli’s personal intervention to ensure that the sitting finance minister’s name was linked to the investigation.

The Commissioner’s analysis of voter intentions before and after the RCMP’s intervention strongly suggests that RCMP’s action heavily influenced the outcome of the January 2006 elections—a fact noted by the World Socialist Web Site and many other political observers at the time. (See “The Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s “inexplicable” intervention into Canada’s election campaign”)

Nevertheless, Kennedy sought to minimize and excuse the role of Zaccardelli and the RCMP top brass on the basis that they did not formally break any laws or internal RCMP regulations and that his investigation found no evidence that the RCMP’s actions were politically motivated. In doing so, Kennedy has ignored a number of troubling questions raised by his report, including the outright refusal of Zacardelli and the RCMP leadership to cooperate with the Public Complaints commission’s investigation.

Given the way Kennedy framed his inquiry—in the absence of a “smoking gun”, i.e., a document or testimony containing a blunt statement that the insider-trading allegations provided the RCMP with an opportunity to tar their Liberal political masters—it was all but certain that he would conclude that there was no evidence that Zacardelli or anyone else in Canada’s national police acted in bad faith. That said, the systematic refusal of the RCMP top brass to cooperate with the inquiry meant that his commission did not even have the opportunity to peruse key RCMP internal documents or question Zacardelli and others about their actions, thus ensuring no light could be shed on the RCMP’s actions.

While Kennedy confined himself to a mild protest over the RCMP high command’s boycott of his investigation, it is, in and of itself, highly significant. Not only does it exemplify the RCMP leadership’s opposition to any public scrutiny of the actions of the national police, it adds to the already compelling case that the RCMP’s intervention in the 2006 elections was a politically calculated move. At the very least, the RCMP top brass’s attempt to thwart Kennedy’s inquiry shows that it is cavalierly indifferent to the fundamental democratic issues raised by its actions during the 2006 election campaign.

While Kennedy can at least be credited for having tried to compel the RCMP leadership to explain its actions, the mainstream media—which from the beginning refused to question the motives of the RCMP and presented the insider-trading “scandal” as simply further proof of Liberal Party corruption—has sought to hurriedly bury his report and the whole affair. The corporate media’s consistent refusal to investigate and publicly debate an episode that saw the highest-ranking police officer in the country overstep his jurisdiction and meddle actively in federal politics indicates the ruling elite’s profound disinterest in basic democratic principles.

A politically explosive police intervention.

The alarming events brought back to light by Kennedy’s report began in late 2005, in the middle of the campaign for the January 23, 2006 federal election. Before the fall of their government in late November 2005, the Liberals introduced tax cuts on dividends and, unexpectedly, extended a tax holiday on income trusts. Barely hours before Finance Minister Ralph Goodale announced these tax concessions, there was a surge in the shares of companies that were income trusts or in the process of transforming themselves into income trusts, raising the possibility that Bay Street financiers had been informed in advance of the contents of Goodale’s announcement.

A month later and in the midst of an election campaign, the RCMP let it be known that it was conducting a criminal investigation to determine whether anyone in the government was involved in insider trading. At the express request of Zaccardelli, an RCMP press release singled out the role of Liberal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale. “It is important to mention,” read the release, “the RCMP emphasises that it possesses at this moment no evidence of illegal or reprehensible acts by any individual, including Finance Minister Ralph Goodale” (emphasis added).

It is rare for the federal police, which cloaks its operations in secrecy, to publicly announce that it is conducting an investigation. (As a result of its investigation, the RCMP ultimately did charge a single employee of the Finance Ministry who personally benefited from insider knowledge by placing investments that yielded $7,000 worth of profits.)

Moreover, such a direct intervention in the Canadian political debate was without precedent. Zaccardelli and the top brass of the RCMP could not have doubted the profound impact of their announcement. In the year prior to the election, the Conservative Party led by Stephen Harper had sought to hide its ultra-right program behind charges of widespread corruption directed at the incumbent Liberal government. Positioning his party to succeed the Martin Liberals, Harper repeatedly invoked the results of a highly publicized commission, chaired by Justice John Gomery, that had found the Liberal government guilty of awarding numerous lucrative public relations contracts to advertising agencies that made kickbacks to the Quebec wing of the federal Liberal Party.

In framing the 2006 elections as a referendum on “Liberal corruption,” Harper sought to keep the attention of Canadian working people away from the Conservative program of reactionary social measures at home and military aggression abroad. Even today, with virtually the entire ruling class supporting the Harper government’s right-wing agenda, including its championing of the use of military force to pursue the geo-strategic interests of the Canadian bourgeoisie, the Conservatives are at pains to hold on to an electoral base that encompasses even 25 percent of registered voters.

The coming to power in 2006 of a Harper government determined to carry out a sharp shift to the right in Canadian politics—in the footsteps of previous Liberal policies of deep budget cuts and overseas military interventions—could not have taken place without a major campaign to divert the attention of voters from the Conservatives’ real agenda.

That was the aim of the uproar around “Liberal corruption” stirred up by Conservative supporters and the big business media and bolstered by the intervention of the RCMP at a critical juncture. In the days immediately following the announcement of the RCMP investigation, support for the Martin Liberals, as measured in opinion polls, plummeted, falling by as much as 20 percentage points. The Liberals, who had enjoyed a narrow lead in popular support, never recovered from that collapse and lost power to the Conservatives, who went on to form a minority government after the January 2006 election.

As soon as the elections were over, Paul Kennedy began on his own initiative an investigation into the actions of the RCMP, so obvious was their political significance. In presenting the results of his inquiry, Kennedy insisted that there are no laws or regulations concerning the divulgation of information about ongoing investigations, even in “highly sensitive situations,” like during an election. Therefore Zaccardelli and the RCMP high command did nothing wrong. “Clearly, if you have no policy,” said Kennedy “you can’t break policy.”

In fact, the results of the inquiry far from exonerate the former head of the RCMP as Kennedy has claimed and the media have trumpeted. Kennedy established that it was Zaccardelli that, in a move that he qualified as “without precedent,” insisted upon naming the target of a federal investigation—in this case Minister Goodale—even if the RCMP had no evidence against him. If Kennedy could not gather evidence against Zaccardelli or establish a motive for him to insert the incriminating phrase into the RCMP press release, it was principally because he and other the top commanders of the RCMP refused to participate in the investigation.

Longstanding RCMP-Liberal tensions

The Kennedy inquiry raises far more questions than it answers. The details publicly available point directly to an intervention of a political nature, designed to favour the Conservative Party.

There exist long-running tensions between the RCMP and the Liberal Party. The RCMP and the Canadian intelligence services consider the Liberals “soft” on crime and terrorism, even as the Liberals have participated without reservation in the “war on terror,” adopted laws that increase police powers, and raised the budgets for the police and the military.

The RCMP leadership were profoundly irritated by, among other things, the public inquiry called by the Martin Liberal government into the case of Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen rendered by the CIA to Syria to be tortured, after the RCMP fingered him to US authorities as a terrorist suspect on the basis of spurious evidence. The National Post, semi-official organ of the Conservatives, regularly published accounts of disagreements between high-ranking RCMP officials and the Liberal government, concerning its political decisions. The Conservatives, for their part, have long cultivated a special relationship with the repressive apparatus of the state, giving them even more powers and funding and glorifying the Canadian Forces.

The significance of the RCMP intervention into the 2006 elections is part of a wider trend within Canadian society as a whole. Traditionally, the ruling elite insisted that their regime was democratic, because the police and military were subordinate to civil society and did not play a political role. However, to implement their increasingly unpopular policies, like participation in the NATO-led invasion of Afghanistan, the abrogation of democratic rights, and the massive transfer of wealth from the working class to the parasitic capitalist class, the ruling elite must increasingly rely on the forces of state repression such as the RCMP and the military.

Throughout this entire affair, Canada’s social-democratic party, the NDP, has played a particularly pernicious role. Fearing the reaction of big business, their leader Jack Layton refused to vigorously condemn the Liberals’ decision to extend the tax exemption on income trusts and cut the tax on dividends as a godsend to the wealthy. Instead, the NDP legitimized the Conservative campaign to make “Liberal corruption” the key issue in the January 2006 election.

The mainstream media’s silence on the disturbing issues raised by the Kennedy report is an indication of the profound erosion of traditional bourgeois-democratic principles in Canada’s editorial newsrooms and corporate boardrooms. The Globe and Mail, mouthpiece of the country’s financial elite, published one of the few editorials on the subject. After denouncing Zaccardelli for having once again undermined the credibility of the RCMP, the editorial concluded that “Canadians cannot but look at Zaccardelli, shake their heads and move on.”

We need to stop simply shaking our heads and moving on, and start making our government and all of it's agencies more accountable.