Determined to uncover who is behind alleged voter suppression tactics used during last year’s federal election campaign, the opposition is zeroing in on Responsive Marketing Group, a Toronto-based call centre with deep Conservative ties.
“We know the Conservative party gave massive amounts of money to RMG,” NDP MP Pat Martin said Wednesday in the House of Commons. “What is the full extent of the relationship with this government and RMG?”
The call centre earned more than $1.4 million, billing close to 100 local Conservative campaigns for services leading up to the May 2011 election, according to returns filed with Elections Canada.
Those payments ranged anywhere from about $250 in Ed Holder and Julian Fantino’s ridings, up to $29,400 in David Wilks’ riding (all three ran successful campaigns).
But more than half of the campaigns received the exact same bill from RMG. In total, 49 ridings across the country, all with varying numbers of electors, paid the call centre $15,000 (the 16 Quebec ridings included in the list were charged an extra penny).
Martin painted the payments as fishy, and asked the government to reveal the source and exact nature of the payments.
The New Democrat on Wednesday made no attempt to downplay his opinion of RMG, describing it a “very shady company with very strong Conservative ties.”
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The new evidence and new demands, however, yielded no new answers from the Conservatives.
“We are assisting Elections Canada with this matter,” said parliamentary secretary to the prime minister Dean Del Mastro, repeating the same line he has for days.
One of RMG’s directors, Stewart Braddick, has a long history with the Conservatives, having worked with former prime minister Brian Mulroney, and former premier and leader of the Ontario PC Party.
He eventually moved to the private sector and co-founded the political consulting group Navigator, Inc. before moving on to RMG a few years later.
The call centre came into the spotlight recently, when former employees of the company who were working on behalf of the Conservative Party told media that, in the days leading up to the election, they were instructed to call voters in closely-fought ridings to tell them their designated polling stations had changed.
Days after that story surfaced, the defeated Conservative candidate in the Quebec riding of Rimouski-Neigette-Temiscouata-Les Basques told the French-language daily Le Devoir he was approached by the national campaign and told to pay $15,000.01 to RMG. He was at a loss, however, to say what services his local campaign received in return. The candidate later retracted his story, saying RMG was hired to conduct voter identification in his riding.
In an attempt to understand the pattern of dozens of ridings paying the same, flat amount to RMG, The West Block contacted campaign managers associated with almost every riding that was billed $15,000.
Calls and emails to local campaigns were quickly returned by the party’s national spokesman, Fred DeLory.
The spokesman offered an explanation, saying RMG has a standard package worth $15,000.
“Ridings can, of course, ask for more or less hours, and adjust the contract accordingly,” he said.
RMG made calls on behalf of the local candidates in question, using the candidate’s name, to help identify supporters, DeLory said.
Calls to RMG’s Toronto office were not returned, but two campaign managers eventually responded to emails.
One was from Nick Crosbie, who is the current president of the St. John’s East Conservative association in Newfoundland and Labrador, and was involved in the 2011 campaign in that riding.
“RMG was contracted by the campaign to assist the campaign in our voter identification efforts and possibly our ‘get-out-the-vote’ efforts on election day. I don’t remember the exact details,” he said.
With a file from Rebecca Lindell.
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