While the Harper Conservatives have avoided any major sponsorship-type scandal since taking power five years ago, they often have sailed very close to the wind.

A parade of ministers — from Bev Oda to Tony Clement to Peter MacKay — have been caught skimping significantly on the truth when called on to explain altered documents, fudged spending numbers, and borrowed government aircraft. Another example was the infamous “in and out” campaign-finance scheme — whereby money was shifted around improperly to pay for advertising — which ended with the party denying serious wrongdoing but pleading guilty to minor transgressions. [source]

If this government has not record of corruption, the debate might take a different turn. Last November, the Conservative party has been found guilty of breaking election laws during their 2006 campaign. Of course, the $52,000 fine must be merely pocket change for a national party.

In 2011, the same government is found of contempt of Parliament. But instead of addressing the charges and allowing for a much needed investigation, the party in power, once again, prorogued Parliament to its benefit, this time, for the election that would bestow them with a majority government.

In December 2011, a similar incident of misleading calls took place in Montreal:

A series of bizarre phone calls has residents in a Montreal riding scratching their heads.

More than a dozen constituents in Mont Royal have reported receiving calls asking if they plan to support the Conservative candidate in the upcoming by-election.

The problem?

There isn’t a by-election in the riding.

And the Liberal MP who has held the riding for 12 years, but fought a hotly contested race on May 2nd, Irwin Cotler, is fighting back.

Cotler asked the Speaker of the House of Commons Wednesday to look into the matter, saying the calls were an unacceptable practice and that it wasn’t fair to his constituents or himself for people to think he wasn’t hard at work in Ottawa.

“Constituents are asking my office and myself when will this imminent, but as I said, non-existent byelection, in fact be occurring? Calls have come in asking– and constituents are surprised, if not shocked, by this–whether I am still serving. Such questions cause damage to my reputation and credibility and would do so to any member of the House,” he said in the Commons Wednesday.

“While this occurred in my riding of Mount Royal, nothing is to stop this from occurring in another riding, and this practice simply put, ends up being an affront to all who serve in this place.”

The calls began last week and have continued this week. Cotler’s office said they are also coming from all corners of his riding.

Mont Royal resident Marian Levy told The Huffington Post she received not one but two phone calls last week asking if she planned to either support the Conservative candidate or Stephen Harper in the upcoming by-election.

Levy said she was not fooled into believing Cotler had resigned or that there was an impending by-election, but she is concerned that residents who are less aware could be misled into believing the MP is no longer active.

“It was the deceitfulness of the calls, I kept arguing with them. They kept insisting that there was a by-election and I’m politically aware and there isn’t one. Their insistence that there is was just an affront to our system because the people who may not be politically aware, they are being deceitful (to them),” she said. “It’s offensive.”

On the second call, Levy said, the woman on the end of the phone suggested Cotler “may be resigning shortly.”

“There was no question that the person on the other end of the phone knew there was not a by-election,” she added.

Levy doesn’t belong to any political party but believes strongly the calls are unethical and that they are just there to start the “rumour mill.” A staff member in Cotler’s constituency office, however, suggested the purpose was clearly to identify political support.

The riding of Mount Royal was a hotly contested race in the last election, with Cotler receiving 41.4 per cent of support and the Conservative candidate Saulie Zajdel obtaining 35.6 per cent of the vote. Prime Minister Stephen Harper held a rally in the riding just three days before the vote and since the Tories’ candidate lost, Zajdel has received a plum patronage job reporting on regional concerns for Heritage Minister James Moore.

Conservative spokesman Fred Delorey did not return calls for comment Wednesday.

The 514 area code number from which the calls originated belongs to the marketing firm Campaign Research which is based in Ottawa. They also did not immediately return calls for comment.

Elections Canada spokeswoman Diane Benson would not say whether the office had received any formal complaints. “The Commissioner of Canada Elections does not confirm or deny complaints or investigations,” she said.

The Globe and Mail reported,

For a while now, there’s been a dirty-trick rumour in circulation: that organized callers have been phoning Liberal MP Irwin Cotler’s constituents, leaving the false impression he is leaving politics and they would need a new MP soon.

Eventually, Government House Leader Peter Van Loan admitted that this was being done on an organized basis by the Conservatives. A sad, cynical enough moment in Canadian politics. Then he took cynicism to a new, jaw dropping level.

No mumbling the normal apologies about “overzealous workers, blah, blah, blah, won’t happen again, etc.” Instead, Canadians were told that this kind of grime should be considered vital free speech – and must be protected, not prevented, by our laws. Efforts to rein it in would have worse consequences than letting it continue. This was the sound of a politician who had left home without an ethical or moral compass that morning. [source]

Yes, you got that right. Should this unacceptable political trick be applied by members of other parties – think Vikileaks30 – the Conservatives would have had demanded Elections Canada and RCMP for a full investigation. But when the dirty tricks point to the Conservatives, they can at times just admit fault while having the audacity to cry freedom of speech or in other cases, claim plain ignorance. And business as usual.

Andrew Coyne clearly provides a context within which this “robocall” scandal needs to be understood:

But my God, what we know is disturbing enough. There were not a few calls: there were thousands. They did not occur in one or two ridings: there were at least 18 of them, scattered across the country. In all but one the race was viewed as being between a Conservative and a Liberal, and in every one the calls were made to Liberal supporters. (The NDP now claims to have found nine ridings in which its own supporters received similar calls. These remain to be verified.) In some cases voters were given false information on where to vote by someone pretending to represent Elections Canada. In others, they were annoyed or insulted by calls purporting to come from the Liberal party.

It is hard to overstate how serious this is. It doesn’t matter whether the calls had their intended effect. It is sufficient that someone made them. If it were just the circumstances, or just their track record, the Conservatives might be given the benefit of the doubt. But the two together, while they do not prove anyone in the party was involved, make it all too plausible to believe they were. Indeed, it would be more surprising to find they weren’t.

Ethical standards are fragile enough in politics. Too many partisans view it as war by other means, exaggerating the stakes in order to justify their behaviour to themselves. In the case of the federal Conservatives, that predisposition to expediency is overlaid with a swaggering, bullying style, yet one that betrays a deep insecurity: the insecurity of a party that, for good reasons and bad, believes the system — the media, the bureaucracy, the judiciary — is stacked against it, and that it is therefore obliged, if not entitled, to take a few shortcuts to even the odds. [source]

I think there is enough evidence against the Harper government that warrants public concern. If we connect the dots between the daily rhetorical fiasco in the House of Commons and the overall undemocratic patterns of the Conservative government, most Canadians are ensured to find themselves no longer in a democratic society.  There is also a growing sense of indignation in those who are socially and politically engaged, and although it is a growing population, I believe it is not growing fast enough to stop the Conservative attacks on democracy.

If actions speak louder than words, and there are compiled lists of incidents and evidence clearly demonstrating this government’s corruption, attempts of intimidation and censorship, proven lies and deception, as well as criminal activities… I do no longer understand what else Canadians need to understand the realities of Canadian politics.

This is not about this one incident nor evidence. This is about a long pattern of corruption and deceit only made possible by the lack of public awareness and/or engagement. A corrupt government can fool us once. But only Canadians can naively allow this government to fool us again.

More than a dozen ridings blitzed by harassing fake Liberal phone calls in 2011 election

Elections Canada: The agency’s powers and mandate

At least 14 election ridings blitzed with live calls from fake Liberals

More than a dozen ridings blitzed by harassing fake Liberal phone calls in 2011 election

RCMP, Elections Commish must find and charge those responsible

In Harper’s robo-call world, ends always justify means

Young Tory staffer Michael Sona becomes first casualty of robocalls revelations

Firm with Tory links traced to election day ‘robocalls’ that tried to discourage voters

Residents In Liberal’s Riding Receive Calls On By-Election That Isn’t Happening

Liberal MP Expresses Outrage Over Tory Calls Claiming A Byelection Looms In His Riding

Van Loan’s defence of dirty tricks debases Tories and degrades democracy