Outthinking Ourselves

In early 2014, when Canada’s minister of state for democratic reform, Pierre Poilievre, began making the case for tightening the vote-eligibility provisions contained in the Elections Act, he cited the problem of voter fraud, as described in a special report prepared by independent elections expert Harry Neufeld.

One problem, though: that report actually said the opposite of what Poilievre claimed. According to Neufeld, “there was no evidence of fraud whatsoever” in the cases he had examined. Poilievre was effectively just making things up. What’s worse: even when he got caught, Poilievre kept on spouting nonsense, and, indeed, proudly proclaimed his intention to continue spouting nonsense. “We are going to keep quoting Mr. Neufeld’s report because it contains the facts that obviously support our position,” he told the House of Commons, when confronted.