Montreal ridings also targeted by misleading calls
Several ridings in Quebec were among those targeted by misleading calls during the last federal election, according to the Liberal members of parliament elected in those ridings.
Mount Royal MP Irwin Cotler and Lac St-Louis MP Francis Scarpaleggia both claim voters in their ridings received calls telling them their polling stations had been moved.
'A strategic attempt to skew the vote,' Scarpaleggia says
Both said they reported the calls at the time but did not file official complaints, though they are now considering doing just that.
"The people who were called in my riding were sometimes told that they were called by Liberals," Cotler said. "So it was a kind of double offence: both being given false information and then attributing that false information – as if the Liberals were the authors of it."
"They were upset," Cotler said of the constituents who called his campaign office. "In some instances, they just didn't vote."
Cotler won his riding by a mere 25 hundred votes – a surprisingly tight race in a Liberal stronghold that was once the riding of Pierre Elliott Trudeau.
Last November, the long-time MP and former justice minister cried foul over what he called misleading calls made to his constituents about a "pending by-election" for his seat, which Cotler said he had no intention of vacating.
More reports of misleading calls pour in
Former Liberal MP Bernard Patry, who lost to the NDP's Lysane Blanchette-Lamothe in his west island riding of Pierrefonds-Dollard, said he, too, heard about misleading calls on election day last May. He said he was approached by two voters who said they'd received calls and been directed to the wrong polling station.
The Conservative government has denied any involvement in the growing scandal, and Elections Canada is now investigating several complaints.