Quebec Liberals hit by fake robocalls on eve of provincial election

Sadly, dirty tricks, or at least allegations of dirty tricks, have become commonplace in Canadian elections.

On Monday, the Quebec Liberals released a statement saying that electors in Quebec city were receiving misleading robocalls purporting to be from the Liberal party.

"This morning we learnt that a series of fake robo-calls identified as the QLP...These calls also refer to a phone number with a false message," notes the release available on the party's website.

"A similar strategy has been used over the last few days in Laval, with actual callers repeatedly calling electors with an aggressive tone while falsely presenting themselves as Liberals."

[ Related: Full coverage of the 2012 Quebec election ]

A spokesperson for the Liberal party told the Montreal Gazette that the robocalls were made exclusively in English in predominantly French-speaking ridings.

"What we know is that people have been receiving these calls in the Quebec City region, saying that with [Tuesday's] election, the Liberal Party will take care of them and to call the following phone number," Michel Rochette said.

The Liberals posted a video of the automated message on YouTube; a recording of the original robocall is not available.

According to The Gazette, Rochette refused to blame either the Parti Québécois or the Coalition Avenir Québec — who lead the Liberals in the polls — but said the robocalls were made by "ill-intentioned political opponents."

Police are looking into to the Liberal Party complaint.

This latest robocall controversy follows similar allegations during the Alberta election and, a national robocall scandal that has elicited complaints from voters in 200 different ridings who claimed to have received misleading calls about the location of their voting booths.

While robocalls are relatively new to Canada, they have been a part of American election culture for years. In fact, they have become so problematic that some states have taken steps to ban the practice of automated calls altogether. Bills containing such a ban have been passed by legislatures in Arkansas, Indiana and Wyoming but have also faced first amendment challenges in the U.S. court system.

In Canada, Elections Canada Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand told MPs at a parliamentary hearing in May, that he may recommend the government regulate contact with voters during election campaigns.

[ Related: Guelph Liberals fined for robocall infraction in ground zero for misleading calls probe ]

Banning political robocalls outright is an extreme solution to misleading calls, but then again, our political parties have repeatedly shown that they don't know how to play nice.