Robocall Fallout

Will Murray: Almost a year after the last ballot was cast, all people in Ottawa seem to talk about these days is the 2011 election. An initial complaint about misleading phone calls in the riding of Guelph has snowballed all across the country, with over 30,000 comments regarding the election being submitted to Elections Canada in the past few weeks. If anything, the cover has been lifted on how parties operate during campaigns, through not just national attack ads, but through less than polite methods on the local level as well. The issue being, that being less than polite is not illegal, whereas claiming one’s calling from Elections Canada, decidedly isn’t. So where does the truth lie? How big of a “scandal” is this, who has the most to lose, and how effective has the government and Opposition been, respectively in their messaging on this? Today, Canada’s Least Watched Political Panel looks at the 2011 election, robocalls and the existence, or lack thereof, of election fraud.

Gregory Mills: It seems pretty clear that something significant and untoward happened in a few ridings, although chiefly Guelph. What’s unfortunate is that it is not particularly unexpected, given how dirty and messy Canadian elections have been getting lately. I don’t think this scandal has really reached its full size yet. The polls haven’t moved much since it broke, but the volume of protests and the possibility of long and public inquiries and/or criminal charges may well build up over time.

To my mind, the only party that really stands to lose in all of this is the Conservatives. Not necessarily because ‘election tampering’, if indeed they are guilty of it, would be a huge blow (although it could be), but also the effect is has on the party’s ability to fundraise from a base that has supported it in part because they wanted cleaner, fairer government than they were getting under the Chretien/Martin Liberals.

There’s also been a very interesting and poignant contrast between the way the person who is effectively the Leader of the Opposition (Mr. Rae) has been willing to ‘throw open’ his party’s books and the stonewalling the Conservatives have responded with. This may not be incredibly meaningful or noticed now, but may well serve to help build up a narrative that suggests the Conservatives are hiding something, aren’t honest, and are guilty of something if nowhere else but in the court of public opinion.

That being said, the Opposition’s line of questioning haven’t been very effective and, as a result, we’ve seen the Conservatives being able to cling on to higher polling numbers despite putting up embarrassing gasbags like Dean Del Mastro to defend them.

WM: I do worry that this issue may be falling victim to the Ottawa noise machine. In an era of 24 hour media, there’s rarely enough news to fill the airspace. That’s not necessarily anyone’s fault, just the reality of the situation. The end result of this has lead to any story about a robocall making the news. Now, robocalls are annoying as hell, but for the most they’re not illegal. All this talk about robocalls, whether they be sourced from the US or otherwise, are irrelevant. The real issue is the supposed calls where someone claiming to be from Elections Canada was misdirecting people to incorrect polling locations.

The Conservatives certainly have the MOST to lose. If it ever turns out that anyone associated with their campaign had to do with the illegal calls, it’s something that could stick to them. As you note though, to this point missteps by the Opposition has allowed the Conservatives to get away with (in the sense that everyone looks silly so no one notices the difference in silliness) their talking points in QP.

Additionally, the Liberals have been tripped up by their own missteps in recent weeks – having a staffer be behind VikiLeaks and their own admission to a misleading phone call in Guelph – which has hurt their credibility. I’m not sure the latter would have been as much of a body blow had they, along with the NDP, not tried to throw anything that would stick – including robocalls and US sourced calls – at this supposed scandal.

John van Weringh: All of which leads me to believe that it’s probably in the opposition’s best interest to tone it down, at least until something concrete emerges. At present, the Conservatives are able to say “this is unsubstantiated; this is conjecture” (I recognize that this language is ennobling them) and are actually correct. Regardless of what the truth ultimately ends up being, the opposition doesn’t know what happened. Very few people know what actually happened, though hopefully that will change in the coming weeks and months. Obviously, this isn’t to say that Ezra Levant-style “nobody actually cares except for the media” arguments are correct – I think that people rightly want to find out what has happened – but without a specific and achievable* goal, arguing about what’s happened isn’t necessarily worth it.

Of course, the opposition can’t simply drop it unilaterally. The Conservatives may see it as advantageous to them to bang on about it, asserting their own innocence and asserting the opposition’s guilt, despite the fact that that’s far less plausible of an explanation. And if this happens, the opposition will need to keep up with them through continued offense.

I agree that the Conservatives have the most to lose – they have the most in general – but I’m not tremendously optimistic that this will resonate much better than any of the other ethics and accountability scandals that have plagued the Cons over the past five years. In a real sense, it depends on (a) what people actually end up believing took place, regardless of what is demonstrably proven (hi Ezra) and (b) whether the degree to which they are upset about this behaviour trumps their policy goals – which is to say, if they don’t think either opposition party is particularly credible on the economy (or issue X), they may stick with the Conservatives regardless.

*Stephen Harper is never going to respond with “FINE. IT WAS US. JUST SHUT UP.”

WM: I think you touch on an important point regarding fallout, and how much this will resonate with the average voter. There’s always been this view that you don’t win elections in Canada, you lose them. I’ve always felt this was a misconception. While Canadians do tire of government’s over time, they do expect the main Opposition Party to offer an alternative. In 2004, the Liberals were on the ropes. Prime Minister Martin had just called the Gomery Inquiry, and the Sponsorship Scandal dominated the news. The Conservative Party of Canada was in its infancy, but regardless, a vulnerable Liberal Party was going up against a united Conservative Party for the first time since 1988. But what happened? The Liberals won a minority. While some rightly point to numerous missteps during the campaign, another issue was the fact the Conservatives spent most of the election in attack mode. They didn’t offer a credible enough alternative. Fast forward to 2006, and Paul Martin kicks of his re-election campaign with a rant about how evil the Conservatives were. How did the Conservatives kick off the campaign? By announcing they’d cut the GST. Additionally, their Accountability Act had been put forward in the months leading up to the election. All this is to say that in order to win hearts and minds you do need to look like a capable alternative. Neither the Liberals or NDP look that way right now. While they keep calling for an inquiry, that’s boiler plate stuff. One thing they need to push further is an alternative policy or an alternative way of doing things. While it may seem odd to push policy this far out, I don’t think it needs to be that specific, but they do need to offer an alternative way of doing things. Of course I have no idea what that might be, but that’s why I am where I am, and why they are where they are. While I said earlier that talk of robocalls was diluting the main issue here, even calling for a ban on robocalls would at least signal and differentiation between how they’d do elections differently than the government.

GM: Agreed. It’ll be interesting to see how policy platforms might be affected by this in the future, as well. The Liberal convention endorsed moving to a preferential balloting system for national elections, and “democratic renewal” has been a simmering topic for (I believe) all parties to some degree or another.

I doubt the Conservatives would be willing to do something like - As was suggested recently by former Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff - banning political advertising outside of election periods (a key component of the CPC’s electoral strategy), but I wonder if issues like Robocalls, or campaign finance improprieties, or excessive Senate appointments might be able to push the topic higher up on the list of the public’s concerns – a trend which could benefit the opposition parties in the long term.

But yes: It’s been apparent for some time that this particular government is adept at avoiding being painted too much with their various outrageous scandals, in part because the opposition’s reaction to these scandals has largely missed the key point of creating a credible alternative and doing more than simply hissing and booing.

WM: I’ll quickly add that this continued approach – government obfuscates, Opposition hisses and boos – just further alienates some Canadians from politics. So not only are you allowing the government to feel less pressure than they should, but you have more people simply throwing their hands up in the air and becoming more disengaged with politics.

GM: Absolutely, and when voters are disengaged they’re less informed, they’re more likely to assume everyone is the same, and the well is poisoned for all.

WM: And the most engaged, and committed voters right now? Conservatives.

JVW: Which really must be the idea that the opposition hopes that RoboCon will shatter: if Conservative supporters become apathetic, and NDP and Liberal supporters become angry, they may be able to shift the balance back to the left.

WM: The problem right now is whether or not this is the type of issue that will send Conservative voters into that apathy. There’s no indication that it will. In fact, the last time the base really awoke and roused rabble was on the Internet Privacy Bill.

GM: There’s also an important difference between the current polling data and internal tension. The Conservative party is excellent at presenting a united front under almost any circumstances and, from the best we can tell, have been genuinely united most of the time.

Lawful Access and Toews’ “Child Pornographers” fall out put a big crack in that armor. Robocalls may not have hurt them much in the general population but it couldn’t have helped, and I wonder if the party’s internal machinations are hiding some unseen drama (for example, the former Tory riding officials questioning Fantino’s election expenses, now, or the former Guelph U Conservative president denouncing them in the Toronto Star).

This is why I think it’ll be interesting to see each party’s fundraising numbers in the next quarter, and whether or not more MPs and party officials start to distance themselves from the party. Not that it may have a huge impact on the polls now, but if their base is finally starting to grow weary of these guys, it could make it that much harder for them to campaign at their usual effectiveness next time out, perhaps threatening their majority.

JVW: And we may start to see some very interesting cracks opening up once concern about jail time starts to trickle through.

GM: Exactly. I doubt there are many conservatives so loyal to the party they’d be willing to suck up jail time just to preserve the Party’s image of undisputed, solid leadership and discipline.

Future Conservative Party leadership, by the way, would be an excellent Least Watched discussion at some point.

JVW: That said, for now, the Conservatives’ approach strikes me as informed by the Liberals’ failure to deal with the fallout from the sponsorship scandal. I think that their strategists, loathe as they may be to admit it, see this as a commensurate game changer, and are acting accordingly. For this reason, I doubt we’ll see a public inquiry, though they may be going too far in the ‘deny and it will go away’ direction with Dean Del Mastro’s denial of anything and everything related to the RoboCon, up to and including Edmonton East.

WM: I’m still unconvinced the minor schisms we’ve seen in Conservative ranks wind up being all that relevant. We’ll have to wait and see, but I don’t think many are really going to be all that worried about what someone who used to work on Fantino’s riding will think. Also, the Conservatives have done an excellent job of developing an us versus them mentality. The Opposition missteps on this allows them to reinforce that notion.

JVW: And specifically, the as-of-yet unsubstantiated allegations that are being poured on them every day in QP may strike many Conservatives and Conservative supporters as deeply unfair, and evidence of the opposition’s pursuit of political opportunity rather than truth. Which, frankly, isn’t too far from what’s happening.

GM: I suspect for the opposition the ideal course of action (and what seems to have started a little bit recently) would be to let the issue simmer on the back burner – it’s great fundraising and advertising fodder. Updates will come from Elections Canada and/or the RCMP anyway, which has the advantage of being nonpartisan (and, in all likelihood, considered by the public to be more trustworthy than any of the parties) and will keep allegations and suspicion circling the party without the need for hyperbole and partisan attacks.

An inquiry or Royal Commission or whatever would of course be an excellent development for them, but that’s unlikely to happen. It’d almost be better dealt with as an epilogue – whatever government eventually replaces the Tories could conceivably open in inquiry in the matter to kick them while they’re down. A strategy I’m sure the CPC would endorse.