Allegations of fraud and bribery are not traditional issues in a Prince Edward Island election campaign.
That all changed on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011, with a headline in The Globe and Mail that read: “Ottawa calls for probe of immigration program.”
The salacious allegations that a P.E.I. bureaucrat met a would-be immigrant in a Marriott hotel suite in Hong Kong and handed that bureaucrat an envelope stuffed with cash created a firestorm across the province and changed the course of the election campaign.
Don Mills, president of Corporate Research Associates, says whether it was a game-changer for Island voters depended on which party that voter supported. He said the majority of Liberals felt it wasn’t going to influence how people voted while Conservatives believed it was going to dramatically change the outcome of the election.
“That’s been the big issue,” Mills said. “There hasn’t been anything close.”
In an exclusive poll carried out for The Guardian, Corporate Research Associates asked those polled how important, if at all, were the allegations of fraud and bribery associated with the provincial immigration program, in terms of influencing how the voter intended to vote in the coming election.
About 27 per cent said the allegations were critically important.
Another 34 per cent said they were important, but not critical.
About 18 per cent said they were not very important while another 17 per cent said they were not at all important.
Four per cent said they didn’t know or would not answer.
Mills said what is interesting is what happens when those numbers are broke down by party lines.
About 53 per cent of Conservatives said the allegations of fraud and bribery were critically important in terms of influencing their vote in the upcoming election.
Meanwhile, only eight per said of Liberals found the allegations critically important.
“In Conservative territory, it’s a lot more critically important than in what I would call pure Liberal territory,” he said.
In mid-September, the federal government
called in the RCMP to investigate allegations of
fraud and bribery in the immigration program.
The federal Citizenship and Immigration Department referred the case to the Mounties after it received information from three former provincial bureaucrats, one of which alleged that a would-be immigrant gave an Island bureaucrat cash-stuffed envelopes to have their application fast-tracked.
The RCMP has not decided yet whether it will launch an investigation.
Mills said there were other issues which resonated more with voters than PNP. He will outline what those issues were in The Guardian on Friday.
“(PNP) caused some people to rethink their voting patterns. It may have narrowed the gap but at this point not sufficient enough to make a difference in the outcome of the election.”
Yeah, those bad Tories that made Ghiz and crew rush through hundreds of millions of PNP$. Then the Tories made them give the money to Liberal friends, including government employees! Yeah, I'm votin' red 'cause the Tories didn't put in rules to prevent Liberal corruption.