http://www.ctv.ca/CTVNews/TopStories/20120301/ontario-election-robocalls-120301/The Conservatives have linked their Liberal rivals to an American speed-dialing company amid ongoing allegations of harassing phone calls during the 2011 election.
The accusation comes as an increasing number of reports emerge that Canadians received automated calls on election day from mysterious phone numbers, some with U.S. area codes.
In Parliament Thursday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Interim Liberal Leader Bob Rae should reveal his own party's alleged links to the scandal.
"We've done some checking," Harper said. "We've only found that, in fact, it was the Liberal party that did source its phone calls from the United States.
"I wonder if the reason the honourable leader of the Liberal party will not in fact show us his evidence is it will point in fact that it was the Liberal party that made these calls."
Harper's comments come nearly a week after a young Conservative campaign worker left his job amid accusations about the so-called robocalls scandal, in which allegedly misleading calls were made to voters on election day. The scandal centres on allegations that voters were told polling stations had moved.
But while the Conservatives have been on the defensive for the past week, Harper attacked the Liberals on Thursday and linked them to a U.S.-based automated calling service.
One calling firm, called First Contact, advertises itself on its website as: "the leading Canadian supplier of call centre services to Liberal candidates and office-holders in Canada."
The company's website also states that it has "since contacted over 8 million voters on behalf of more than 800 clients" across Canada.
First Contact President Mike O'Neill told The Canadian Press that his company was not involved in misleading or harassing calls.
In Parliament, the Conservatives repeated their claim that the voter suppression allegations are a "smear" campaign orchestrated by "sore losers" from the last election.
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