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The applications all claim voters received misleading telephone calls intended to suppress the vote. The applications were filed in Federal Court on behalf of identified voters in each riding and the council is not itself a party to litigation.

In the motion made on behalf of the Conservative candidates, the party argues that the cases should be thrown out because the council is not an elector and has brought the legal action to damage the Conservative brand.

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The council’s “involvement is for the improper motive of attacking only Conservatives, consistent with their very vocal opposition of and malice towards the Conservative Party of Canada,” the motion claims.

The motion also claims the council is using the publicity from cases to raise money on its website and calls the group’s national chairwoman, Maude Barlow, a “professional agitator” and “virulent critic” of Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The motion, from Conservative party lawyer Arthur Hamilton, even assails his opposing counsel Steven Shrybman, calling him “an avowed adversary” of the party. It is backed up with an affidavit from another lawyer in Hamilton’s firm that traces the union connections of council board members and support for the Occupy movement and asserts the council “is of like mind with labour union elites.”

The affidavit includes dozens of exhibits containing hundreds of pages of documents tracing the history of the organization and its opposition to the Conservatives and Stephen Harper, and argues that it is not interested in advancing democracy, as it claims, but is motivated by “animus.”