Michael Harris is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker. He was awarded a Doctor of Laws for his “unceasing pursuit of justice for the less fortunate among us.” His eight books include Justice Denied, Unholy Orders, Rare ambition, Lament for an Ocean, and Con Game. His work has sparked four commissions of inquiry, and three of his books have been made into movies.

This is the story of File P10-8 at Elections Canada, and why that esteemed agency will never get to the bottom of Robogate – whatever it may be.

Let’s begin with a picture posted on the Internet. It was of a stack of computer equipment that drew some Twitter action.

“Adding final servers for the political super-weapon.”

The words accompanying the snap of the servers belong to Matt Meier, CEO of RackNine Inc., and they show up in a Twitter exchange, the rest of which went like this:

“So pretty,” says Jonathon Gendron.

“I’ll snap a picture when everything’s in place,” Matt replies. “These just showed up yesterday, need to get everything formatted and OSed.”

The exchange took place between 8:12 and 8.17 pm on November 2, 2010.

What does all this mean? No one knows. I sent a detailed email to Mr. Meier’s website two days ago asking a series of questions but have so far received no reply. So for now, there are only questions. Since the man with the red goatee is a self-avowed non-partisan, what on earth would he do with a political super-weapon? If it wasn’t for personal use, (I jest) for whom did he build it? What could it do? And when, if ever, was it put to use?

Matt Meier is firmly on the record denying any knowledge of how a despicable client used his company to make phony, misleading, and illegal calls in the federal riding of Guelph during the 2011 General Election. How could he know, since his company just sells access to systems, is not a call-centre, and does not monitor outgoing calls? And Elections Canada has made clear that RackNine is not under investigation. It’s that sneaky Pierre Poutine and his “burner” cellphone they’re after.

Question: When the resident of Separatist Street in Joliette, Quebec applied to RackNine to open an account, Meier assures us he did not use the “stupid” name ‘Poutine’ or the applicant wouldn’t have gotten his account. Meier points out that he took the trouble to check the applicant’s address and it appeared to be a real one. Wouldn’t he also have checked the applicant’s name as he gave it? Meier knows that name. If it wasn’t ‘Pierre Poutine’, what was it?

Going back to the question of who might need a political super-weapon about this time, there was only one pending political event on the radar in this country – a series of federal by-elections to be held on November 29th, 2010. The most important one was in Vaughan, where the Conservative brass wanted to steal a long-held Liberal seat that used to belong to Liberal Maurizio Bevilacqua. Since the incumbent was not re-offering federally, but running instead in Vaughan’s mayoralty race, this was the perfect opportunity to take a seat that the Grits had held for 20 years.

The CPC threw everything they had into the battle for Vaughan, including the prime minister. On Friday, October 15, 2010, Stephen Harper held a press conference in Vaughan at the Ice Cream Patio in Woodbridge. That meeting was followed by a private tete-a-tete between the prime minister and Julian Fantino. Afterwards, the PM disappeared in his limo and Julian Fantino announced his run for parliament at the Riviera Parquet Banquet Hall in Vaughan/Thornhill.

Three Harper cabinet ministers were in the crowd of 1000 Fantino supporters – Jim Flaherty, Lois Brown and Peter Kent. Also in attendance were Conservative candidates from other ridings, people like Stella Ambler, Ted Opitz, and Parm Gill. Just over a month later, more Tory heavyweights appeared at a Fantino fundraiser, including John Baird and Dean Del Mastro.

If there was any doubt about how badly the Conservatives wanted this riding, that was taken care of when Stephen Lecce took over Julian Fantino’s communications operation for the by-election. It was a good get for Fantino. Lecce was a top PMO strategist and was soon to become Stephen Harper’s deputy director of communications.

Although aides from cabinet ministers have been known to take leaves of absence to work on political campaigns, just as union officials and private sector workers do, it was unusual for a top advisor from the PMO to do that. But what better way to blunt then Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s momentum (I know, what momentum) than to overrun a Liberal stronghold? And who knew, with a beach-head in Vaughan, maybe it could become the staging area for a Tory majority government based on breaching the Grit fortress of the GTA.

Fast forward to early 2011, after Julian Fantino won the by-election and before that spring’s general election. Stephen Lecce was still working behind the scenes for now MP Julian Fantino gathering “intel” on the Liberals, as this email from February 16th shows: “Hi Team, I am hoping to start collecting opposition research on Genco/Vaughan Liberals. Here is what we know: Jan. 19th , the local EDA held an AGM at Vellore. Can we try to lock down who is on the Board? They recently launched an amateur website which includes no names, just extensions of board members. Feb. 10th, Genco held a by-election volunteer thank you event. Roughly 100 people showed up (I am told many were from outside the riding, which is good news.) I understand they only permitted members of the Party into the event. I want to know if anyone has intel on Genco? And any Liberal activities/pre-election undertakings?”

Despite all the war-room togetherness, trouble had been brewing in the Vaughan Electoral District Association in the wake of the by-election victory. Some members of the Association objected to the news that there was a second bank account for the Fantino campaign that held hundreds of thousands of dollars. Since the money was said to be from the candidate’s fundraising for the by-election, they demanded a copy of the financial statements. They didn’t get it. They were also troubled by “possible improper transfers” of surplus Fantino funds to nine other Tory candidates who intended to run in the general election.

Elections Canada has received a total of three mutually supportive affidavits from people linked to the Vaughan EDA – including two who were active in the association at the time of the dispute and later resigned because of it. The file at Elections Canada that holds them is P10-8. One of the affiants, Tracey Kent, had been with the Vaughan EDA from 2007 through 2011. She held various positions including Secretary, Chief Financial Officer and Director at Large.

Kent had been the EDA member responsible for obtaining signatures for Mr. Fantino’s nomination papers for the by-election. She objected to the Vaughan EDA merely assuming the alleged second bank account and says she made those objections at the time during a January 18th meeting in the riding. According to the official minutes of the meeting, there was no mention of Tracey Kent’s reservations – an alleged omission that also made its way into her affidavit and that of former EDA director Richard Larello.

According to the Kent affidavit supplied to Elections Canada, she had also had other problems with the campaign. This is from an email she sent to other senior EDA members entitled Fundraiser Ticket Confusion. It was sent at the time of the first Fantino campaign in Vaughan. “There seems to be a slight problem with ticket purchases. A few of the people on my call list already had whole tables of tickets dropped off to them by others on the committee. There has been great confusion because of this, especially concerning the Federal donation rules and corporations not lawfully allowed to contribute. I am greatly concerned that this will be an issue with Elections Canada.”

With respect to the second bank account, Tracey Kent said this in her affidavit: “I objected to the second account and to date, have not been provided with an explanation to this second account. I have been unable to learn the contents, origin, history or if this bank account has ever been audited by Elections Canada.”

It is interesting to note the Kent affidavit makes passing reference to the people who worked in the Fantino by-election campaign office. There were two separate private offices within the campaign office. The first office was occupied by campaign manager Michael Crase and Julian Fantino himself. The second one was for PMO communications expert Stephen Lecce, volunteer co-ordinator Madi Murariu and “a large man with a reddish goatee” who worked on “a computer bank and to my knowledge managed the electoral data for the campaign.”

(According to the Fantino campaign filing for the 2011 general election, a Barrie company called Electright did his robocalling at a cost of $15,820. There was no claim for phone services in the 2010 by-election.)

Here is what we are left with. No one knows who the guy with the red goatee is who worked the computers alongside Stephen Lecce in the Fantino by-election campaign office, despite how popular red goatees are becoming. No one knows if there really were two bank accounts for the Julian Fantino by-election run. No one knows if the Fantino campaign did or didn’t lend surplus campaign funds to other Tory candidates, and if it did, if there is anything wrong with that.

And that’s all because the federal government agency that is supposed to get to the bottom of 31,000 complaints, tweets, and communications from genuinely aggrieved parties, bitter political partisans, and people filled with retroactive anger over something they may not have understood at the time about the 2011 election, has not finished the work of auditing Julian Fantino’s by-election campaign filing. This is from the Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections, to one of the affiants, Richard Larello, just yesterday:

“I have been informed that the Political Financing and Audit Division has not yet completed its audit of the Return. Once that audit has been completed, your complaint will be reviewed by my office to determine whether there is a reasonable basis to believe that an offense under the Act has been committed.”

Richard Lorello swore his affidavit in May, 2011. If you multiply even 10 percent of 31,000 by ten months, that number will tell you why four out of five Canadians believe a public inquiry is the only way to find out if Pierre Poutine had helpers or a boss.

Readers can reach the author at [email protected]. Click here to view other columns by Michael Harris.