Odd Happenings in Mont-Royal

So imagine this. You are an MP of a riding in the middle of Montreal. You’re not any MP, though, you are a Liberal MP. Your party has held this riding since 1940 and not only that, the first time you ran for this riding, you won it with 91%. Now it’s true, your vote share in the riding has dwindled since that amazing performance, but you still can almost guarantee that you will win. There’s no pressure on you with such a long history of support. Oh, and one more thing: your riding once belonged to one of the most, if not the most famous Prime Ministers in Canadian history, Pierre Trudeau.  You for sure have this riding all wrapped up.

Nick Kouvalis, Rob Ford Election aid, now working for Campaign Marketing

But don’t get me wrong, you’ve never been one to rest on your laurels. You’re a renowned expert on International Law and Human Rights, after all, and you also served as council for Nelson Mandela. You served as council for Egyptian democracy activist Saad Eddin Ibrahim and imprisoned Jewish activist  Natan Sharansky. Most recently you partnered up with others to bring charges against Iranian president Ahmadinejad. You have a strong understanding of how parliament works and are very involved in your community. In other words, you’re no slouch.

So imagine your surprise when out of nowhere you have constituents contact you to ask you why you are resigning your seat. Constituents are asking when, as they have been told, a recently announced by-election will be announced and whether or not you are still serving. Of course you’re astonished. You have no intention of stepping down and besides, for a by-election to be called, you’d have to have stepped down already. This kind of action could only have been undertaken by the most immoral and crooked people who have a sneaky agenda to pursue.

Irwing Cotler, MP for Mont-Royal. Yes, he's still serving.

Believe it or not the above scenario actually took place. In the riding of Mount-Royal (or Mont-Royal in French) MP Irwin Cotler, who has held the riding since 1999 and has not said anything about quitting, he received called from concerned citizens asking him if he was still serving as their MP. Upon further examination it was discovered that these people had been called by a group claiming to be “Campaign Research” seeking out those intending to support the Conservative party in the upcoming by-election. It turns out that two people who work for the group Campaign Research have ties to the Conservative party. One of them is Nick Kouvalis, who was Rob Ford’s election aid, and another is Aaron Wudrick who, according to the blog Sixth Estate:

was caught a few years ago calling for the creation of Conservative“shell organizations” and “front groups” on university campuses.

The Sixth Estate Blog goes on to say:

This is not the first time that we have heard rumours about mysterious phone calls. Last May, I predicted that the most under-studied story coming out of the Conservative victory was the fact that somebody had the resources to run a criminal project in at least a dozen ridings across the country, widely reported in the media, attempting to deceive voters about where they were supposed to vote. The project as reported was so scattershot that it was impossible to guess who was responsible. Allegedly some of the callers were told they were being contacted by a Conservative representative, but there was never any proof. Elections Canada promised to investigate, but we’ve never heard a peep from them about it. That in itself is suspect.

My question is, will Elections Canada now finally look into these charges of ghost calling ridings now that a market research company with direct links to the Conservative party has been caught red handed? And, if they are caught, will the Conservatives do what they usually do and just buy out the proceedings to keep the incident off the front pages?

Stay Tuned.

Cross Posted at The Ryan Painter Show