Three conservative candidates have shared online images of what is intended to be a government document aimed at influencing inmates to vote against their party, but the document seems to be a false version poorly edited from a real government website.
In publications on social networks on Sunday, CPC candidates Ron Chhinzer, Larry Brock and Frank Caputo shared the document, with Chhinzer and Brock, which implies that the Liberal Party could be behind the move.
“This document was found behind bars and delivered by a prison guard,” Chhinzer wrote in an XX that appeared on Sunday. “Are the liberals seriously trying to win the convicted criminals attacking conservative crimes policies?”
This document was found behind bars and delivered by a prison guard.
Are the liberals seriously trying to win the criminals convicted pointing to conservative crimes policies?
When asked why the crime is increasing, just remember that the liberal party is, once again, … pic.twitter.com/xm14W92WCP
The CBC News visual team examined the document and discovered that it is likely to be an edited version of a Real government website That has nothing to do with prisons. The page is about learning to present taxes.
The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), the agency responsible for managing federal prisons, also said there was no evidence of the document that circulated in the correctional facilities and pointed out that it was not an authentic government document.
The conservative candidates shared a letter on social networks, claiming that the inmates were given to influence their vote towards the liberals. The CBC News visual team discovered that the letter is probably an altered version of a real website, and Canada’s correctional service says it did not find evidence that it is distributed.
The claim has also been repeated and shared by the influencers of social networks and numerous people in line with publications on the document obtained hundreds of thousands of points of view.
Some users pointed out that the image seemed to be from an official document of the Canada government on “official letterhead”, referring to the logo and text of the government at the top of the page.
The document describes a series of elements related to the proposal of the Conservative Party on Crime, including the creation of a rule of “three attacks” for serious crimes, designation as dangerous criminals and other elements.
But it also includes a series of proposals that conservatives have not submitted, such as demanding inmates in maximum security facilities to use orange jump costumes, eliminate televisions and, in general, reduce funds for federal prisons.
Some social media users who responded to publications questioned whether inmates were even allowed to vote. Inmates have been allowed in Canada to vote, regardless of their sentence, since 2002.
Spelling errors, odd format
The supposedly found document in the prison has multiple spelling errors. Near the upper part, the “proposal” is spelled as “forecast”, and in another case the document talks about “weapons of sale”, with an “additional s”.
The lyrics use circles similar to the Real website, as well as several references written identically to virtual lessons and how long they give to complete. A sentence, about access to an online portal, is the same in both documents.
The document has a strange and confusing format, which suggests that it was badly edited. It also has a file route in the lower left corner, which implies that it may have been printed from someone’s computer.
CBC News could easily recreate elements of the document, for example, the way in which the icons on the original website appear as empty boxes in the letter, keeping the real website as their own file, keeping it again as PDF and then simply editing the PDF with online editing tools that are widely available.
CSC said in a statement that the letter was not an official government document and that it could not find evidence that it had been found in a federal correctional institution.
“While claims were made earlier this week about the existence of a certain document that was supposedly found in an institution, we consulted with the guardians and we could not find it,” said the statement. “The image that was published on social networks was not an official document of the Government of Canada and we did not support the circulation of these documents under the Wordmark government of Canada.”
Conservatives respond
He reached to comment, the national conservative campaign reiterated that a correctional officer had provided the document and that they had found it in a prison.
The conservatives also indicated that a Declaration of CSC, provided to Another media organization At the beginning of the week, he did not explicitly refuse that the document could have circulated at some point in an installation. Rather, he said that the document was not currently in circulation.
Neither the Central Conservative Campaign nor the candidates who shared the online document responded to specific requests of comments on where the document circulated and why the candidates suggested that the Liberal Party was involved.
The liberal campaign sent CBC News to the CSC statement.
