Three Conservative candidates have shared online images of what purports to be a government document aimed at influencing inmates to vote against their party — but the document appears to be a poorly-edited fake version of a real government webpage.
In posts on social media on Sunday, CPC candidates Ron Chhinzer, Larry Brock and Frank Caputo all shared the document, with Chhinzer and Brock implying that the Liberal Party could be behind the move.
“This document was found behind bars and handed over by a prison guard,” wrote Chhinzer in an X post that appeared on Sunday. “Are the Liberals seriously trying to win over convicted criminals by targeting Conservative crime policies?”
This document was found behind bars and handed over by a prison guard.<br><br>Are the Liberals seriously trying to win over convicted criminals by targeting Conservative crime policies? <br><br>When you wonder why crime is on the rise, just remember that the Liberal Party is, yet again,… <a href=”https://t.co/XM14w92WcP”>pic.twitter.com/XM14w92WcP</a>
CBC News’ visual investigations team examined the document and found that it is likely an edited version of a real government webpage that has nothing to do with prisons. The page is about learning how to file taxes.
The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC), the agency responsible for running federal prisons, also said it found no evidence of the document circulating in correctional facilities and noted that it was not an authentic government document.
We investigate: Did Liberals give prison inmates this anti-Poilievre letter to sway votes?
The claim has also been repeated and shared by social media influencers and numerous people online with posts about the document garnering hundreds of thousands of views.
Some users noted that the image appeared to be of an official Government of Canada document on “official letterhead,” referring to the government logo and text at the top of the page.
The document describes a number of elements related to the Conservative Party’s proposal on crime, including the creation of a “three strikes” rule for serious crimes, designation as dangerous offenders and other elements.
But it also includes a number of proposals that the Conservatives have not put forward, like requiring inmates in maximum security facilities to wear orange jump suits, removing TVs and generally slashing funding for federal prisons.
Some social media users responding to the posts questioned whether inmates were even allowed to vote. Inmates in Canada have been allowed to vote, regardless of their sentence, since 2002.
The document allegedly found in the prison has multiple spelling errors. Near the top, “proposal” is spelled as “preposal,” and in another instance the document talks about “sellings guns,” with an extra “s.”
The letter uses circled numbers similar to the real webpage, as well as several identically-written references to virtual lessons and how long they take to complete. One sentence, about accessing an online portal, is the same in both documents.
The document has odd and jumbled formatting, suggesting it was poorly edited. It also has a file path in the bottom left corner, implying that it may have been printed out from someone’s computer.
CBC News was able to easily recreate elements of the document — for example, the way the icons on the original webpage appear as empty boxes in the letter — by saving the real webpage as its own file, saving it again as a 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 documents 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 allegedly found at an institution, we consulted with Wardens and could not find it,” the statement said. “The picture that was posted on social media was not an official Government of Canada document and we do not support circulating such documents under the Government of Canada wordmark.”
Reached for 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 noted that a CSC statement, provided to another media organization earlier in the week, did not explicitly deny that the document may have circulated at some point in a facility. Rather, it said that the document was not currently in circulation.
Neither the central Conservative campaign nor the candidates who shared the document online replied to specific requests for comment about where the document allegedly circulated and why candidates suggested the Liberal Party was implicated.
The Liberal campaign referred CBC News to the CSC statement.
