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New robocall rules attempt to protect voters during election

New robocall rules attempt to protect voters during election

This fall’s federal election will be the first test of new robocall rules that Canada’s broadcast regulator rolled out in April in an attempt to prevent the type of fraudulent calls thousands of voters received in the last election.

Anyone who intends to contact voters with pre-recorded political messages – robocalls – must register with the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunicaions Commission (CRTC) within 48 hours of making the first call, under regulations that went into effect as soon as Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the election call on Sunday.

The new rules are part of a number of changes the government made to the Elections Act after it was revealed that a staffer for Guelph, Ont., Conservative candidate Marty Burke made calls to some 7,600 opposition supporters on May 2, 2011, falsely advising them their polling locations had changed.

Micheal Sona, Burke’s communications director at the time, was convicted of attempting to prevent non-Conservative voters from casting their ballots and sentenced to nine months in jail and one year’s probation. He is appealing the sentence.

This time around, candidates, political parties, corporations, trade associations or any other person or group that wants to make automated political calls will have to provide photo ID and attestation from a notary to get on the CRTC’s Voter Contact Registry. The telemarketing companies they use also have to register.

Voters can submit a complaint if they think the rules have been broken, and penalties can run up to $1,500 per violation for individuals and up to $15,000 per violation for corporations or groups.

The commission says the registry is meant to help “protect Canadians from rogue and misleading telephone calls during federal elections, and to ensure that those who contact voters during an election do so transparently.”

But it’s unclear how that will be accomplished: the registry is only a list of authorized callers; the CRTC has no control over the content of calls.

“Determining whether specific calls were intended to deceive or mislead is outside the AMP [administrative monetary penalties] regime created by the Fair Elections Act and administered by the commission,” the CRTC says.

And there are still ways to get around the new rules, as Elections Canada noted in a November 2012 report on the robocalls case.

“Current technology offers several ways by which individuals who do not want to comply with the rules can escape detection,” the report said. “Even where there are applicable legislative or regulatory requirements … these requirements can in practice be evaded using various technological means of anonymity.”

The fraudulent calls to Guelph voters, for instance, were made through VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), which allows the caller to mask the number he’s calling from. The telemarketing service provider was contacted through a pay-as-you-go cellphone, and was paid online via PayPal by way of a proxy server, which disguises the computer’s location.

“Legal prohibitions and disclosure requirements are of little impact on those determined to operate outside of the law,” the Elections Canada report says. “The solution to these problems may be more in the advancement of technology than in the introduction of new rules.”