The prosecutors who decided to proceed with a charge against Conservative campaign worker Michael Sona in the robocall case must believe they have a shot at conviction, which suggests Elections Canada has evidence stronger than anything it has disclosed in publicly available court documents, says veteran elections lawyer Jack Siegel. “The standard to get it through a prosecutor is reasonable prospect of obtaining a conviction,” said Siegel, an active Liberal, in an interview Wednesday. “Of course, all the evidence they have is not going to be on the public record.” Sona, who was director of communications on the unsuccessful campaign of Guelph Conservative candidate Marty Burke, was charged Tuesday under the Elections Act for seeking to “prevent or endeavour to prevent an elector from voting at an election,” for actions alleged to have taken place between April 30 and May 2, 2011.
On April 30, someone established an account with voter-contact firm RackNine under a false name and activated the disposable “burner” cellphone that was used to send a fraudulent robocall to 7,000 opposition supporters on election day, May 2, directing them to the wrong polling station.
Sona has not spoken publicly since the charge was laid, but sent out a tweet Tuesday night suggesting that he is not “prepared to take the fall for this.”
Sona, who was fired by the party last February when news broke about the investigation into the Guelph robocall, did several media interviews last year in which he claimed he was being used as a scapegoat, and he tells his friends that he doesn’t have any information to share with investigators.
Full Article: Public robocalls documents don’t tell the full story of the case against Sona: expert | canada.com.