OK, this is really bizarre. Besides the fake robocalls claiming the Burnaby Neighbourhood House was endorsing NDP candidate Kennedy Stewart, there was a second round of calls with a recorded message from Mayor Derek Corrigan that was at least a mistake if not intentional mischief.
The weird thing is the message was real; it was Corrigan's message calling on people to vote for Kennedy Stewart, and it went out to NDP supporters before the advanced polls weekend.
However, it appears as if someone recorded that message or had it on voicemail and then called up a bunch of random people and played it back.
Now all of this is speculation at this point, as I don't have a smoking gun yet, but mark my words, something nefarious is going on here. Why? Because at the beginning of the message was someone's voicemail prompt, saying you have one new message. So someone likely recorded the original robocall, which was legit, and was crank-calling people with it the weekend after advanced polls.
Our associate publisher, Lara Graham, received a few of these calls, and she told me they had someone else's recorded voicemail prompts on them, as if someone was playing back their voicemail message on her office voicemail. Her office number is also easily searchable on the Internet.
The original Corrigan message that went out before advanced polling targeted people the NDP identified as supporters. The second round of these calls, which apparently started last Friday, went to people who were obviously not voting NDP, like Liberal candidate Adam Pankratz, whose cell phone number is easily searchable on the Internet.
"It did come through like it was on a voicemail, I thought it was my voicemail being screwy. (It) was part of the message," Pankratz told me.
So maybe it was just a mistake, right? Maybe the NDP's robocall phone bank sent out the old message again? Well, that doesn't explain the foreign voicemail prompts, and Kennedy Stewart said he checked with NDP headquarters, and there were no reports the call went out again by accident.
"If it’s just crank calls, I don’t think there’s much they can do about that, except if they’re impersonating me, then it’s fraud,” Stewart said.
“We have contacted the RCMP, too,” he said.
I've put a call in to Elections Canada to confirm they are investigating. Kennedy also alerted the CRTC. Check this post for updates.
