Elizabeth May on why: "We need an independent inquiry"

I received this email from Elizabeth May today:

Re: confidence in Elections Canada

If you go to the robogate.ca site the Green Party put on line, you will find the court documents filed by Al Matthews the Elections Canada investigator. He is obviously a fine person and working hard. I had the document placed on line so Canadians can read the process of the investigation themselves. Please do so (click on "evidence" on the home page.) Take note that this one person has been the whole investigations team ever since May. My own complaint that the abuse was national in scope had no reply. Matthews was assigned to investigate Guelph and Guelph alone.

I got a sinking feeling as I read his affidavit for production of further information from Rack-Nine. Read for yourself. It is clear he has no technical/expert support. When he was told a number is a "trunk route," he googled "trunk route" and reproduces the definition he found on Wikipedia. If not for the amazing stroke of luck that a complaining voter in Guelph turned out to be an expert in how "spoofing" worked and what was likely going on technically to make the robocalls, we wouldn't be anywhere near as close to solving the ONE riding as we are now.

The complaining voter, by the way, had originally emailed Elections Canada in May and received no reply. The techy-expert Brent Pederson (starting at para 51 in the production of documents affidavit) was persistent and emailed again in October. By then Matthews was assigned to the case, so Pederson's email was referred to him. But it does not inspire confidence that the emails went un-answered, that Matthews was so very definitely out of his depth until the fabulous serendipity of Mr. Pederson of Guelph, or that Elections Canada abandoned solving the robocall scandal in 2008 in Saanich-Gulf Islands.

We need an independent inquiry.

Elizabeth