The Citizen's Glen McGregor sends three points of rebuttal to my post this morning about his story (co-written with Stephen Maher) on rule-breaking election-eve Liberal robocalls in the Guelph riding that has been the eye of the storm over Conservative vote suppression efforts in May's federal election: The Valeriote calls did give the Conservatives a new line of defence and did further muddy the water, as evidenced in any Hansard from this week. We didn't pass on judgment on whether the defence was valid. We never equated the Valeriote calls with the faux Elections Canada calls. Both were parts of the narrative of key...

Steve Maher and Glen McGregor, the two Ottawa reporters who broke the Robocall scandal, have a long story in yesterday's Ottawa Citizen that warrants a close read. The story leads with an account of Liberal robocalls in the Guelph riding on the eve of the May 2, 2011, federal election—calls that expressed dismay at CPC candidate Marty Burke's opposition to abortion "in all circumstances." In a glaring escalation of false equivalence, Maher and McGregor say "revelations" about the automated calls "are giving the Conservatives a new line of defence against allegations of vote suppression and further muddying the events leading up to...

The Harper government has mounted a classic bucket defence* against charges it illegally steered opposition voters to faraway, fake polling stations in a deliberate attempt to discourage them from voting. Their defenders say: 1. Nothing serious happened. 2. It happened to us too. 3. There's no proof we did it. 4. In fact, it was the Liberals who did it. 5. The calls didn't work anyway. 6. Voters don't care about it. 7. It'll blow over in a day or two. Some of this commentary is just the predictable party-line pandering from pro-Harper media, but a Globe and Mail story purporting to show...