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This article was published 18/3/2012 (3116 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The fraudulent calls that misdirected voters across Canada are grounds "for a f--king huge investigation," Stephen Harper's former chief of staff said in an email to a reporter this week.

Ian Brodie, who was not involved in the 2011 election campaign, made the comment in an email that was not intended for publication but that was posted online after a misunderstanding.

Brodie's comments have a strikingly different tone than the official Conservative talking points, in which any reports of misleading calls beyond Guelph are dismissed as baseless smears by sore losers on the opposition benches.

"Something seems to have gone on, on a scale I've never seen before," Brodie wrote to Globe and Mail columnist Lawrence Martin, then joked: "As you may be aware, I am a strong proponent of the death penalty for this sort of thing."

Martin, who didn't realize the comments were not for publication, posted them in a story on iPolitics.ca, which the political website later took down.

Brodie was the chief of staff in the Prime Minister's Office from 2006 until 2008.

Brodie's comments were published a few hours after the National Post revealed that the mysterious "Pierre Poutine" demon-dialled his way through five area codes.

The unnamed individual behind misleading "robocalls" during the last federal election misdirected 5,053 voters in Guelph, Ont.'s 519 area code, but also called 74 people in suburban Toronto's 905 area code, 35 people in Toronto's 416, 22 in the 705 area of northern Ontario, 14 in 613 -- which includes Kingston and Ottawa -- and one person in Thunder Bay, the Post's John Ivison reported on Friday.

Conservatives suggest that the pattern shows Poutine may have downloaded a list of Guelph opposition supporters that was clogged by bad data, which would explain why voters beyond the riding have complained of receiving the robodial directing them to the wrong polling station.

An industry expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity, agreed that may be what happened.

"It just means they didn't take the time to scroll through the list of phone numbers and delete them," he said.

There are unverified reports from some voters, though, that they received recorded calls similar to the Guelph call, directing them not to the Quebec Street Mall location in Guelph, but to locations in other ridings.

Some of those calls may have come from telephone numbers other than that assigned to the Joliette, Que., "burner" phone that Poutine used for his misdirection campaign.

If those reports are confirmed, it would suggest that the mysterious Poutine was acting beyond Guelph, recording a series of messages designed to bamboozle voters in different ridings.

In Montreal on Friday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said his party is helping Elections Canada with its investigation.

"I've repeated a number of times that all our calls are documented," he said. "They are available to Elections Canada. Of course, serious things did occur in Guelph and for months now we have been helping Elections Canada to carry out its investigation." Harper also called on the other parties to do the same.

The Conservatives are believed to have provided Elections Canada with an electronic clone of their massive Constituency Information Management System, which would include detailed logs showing who downloaded which lists.

Investigators may have been able, therefore, to match up the Pierre Poutine list with a specific download from CIMS.

Brodie said in an email to Martin that the culprit may not have needed to have access to CIMS, because so much information about voters is available from public sources, including Elections Canada, which lists donations.

"If you gave me an hour, I could cull a list of known Liberal and NDP supporters that added up to more than ten thousand names -- using nothing but the Elections Canada website! And if I had a reasonably competent amateur programmer, I could match my list of known supporters to home telephone numbers in a single afternoon. Five cents per name and a few quotes from a few demon dial companies and there you go -- a very large calling campaign.

-- Postmedia News