Kady O'Malley seems unnecessarily apologetic in her post about the actual status of Andre Thouin, the "Elections Canada official", as reported in the press, who doesn't actually seem to work for Elections Canada, or for any branch of the Canadian government.  Thouin led two RCMP officers into Conservative Party headquarters to execute a search warrant:

I feel like I'm picking on poor Steve Janke, but I just can't let this latest bit of speculation pass without comment.

OK, if I was afraid of being picked on, I wouldn't be blogging, and certainly not on a Tory-friendly blog.  And do you have any idea how much traffic a link from Maclean's is worth?  Please, pick on me all you like.  I like it.

Well, not in a weird fetish sort of way.  OK, let's just move on.

Janke has painstakingly cut and pasted the names of hundreds of Elections Canada employees, which he dredged up from the government online directory, GEDS, as part of his continuing effort to throw suspicion on the motivations of the agency, and the way that the raid into Conservative headquarters was carried out by the RCMP.

First off, I didn't cut-and-paste.  I typed.  I'm a really good typist.  Easier to get the formatting right.

Like most of my posts, the information came by quite innocently.  I was curious which branch handles these investigations, so that I could refer to it properly.  I was surprised that Thouin's name was nowhere to be found.

So why reproduce Elections Canada's internal structure and the employee list?  Two main reasons.  First, to be sure that I didn't miss anything.  Second, so that Google can index the page.  That way my blog will rank highly on any searches related to Elections Canada.  That's one of the reasons my blog gets traffic.  I think carefully about how people find information and what they're looking for.  I don't get a free ride by being associated with Canada's premier news magazine.  I have to work to get visitors to my blog. Zing!

Not surprisingly, Janke finds [Thouin's absense] to be at least a little bit suspicious, although he does note that it is a 'minor point'.

Thanks for being clear.  I don't think I need to be fitted for a tinfoil hat just quite yet.

Well, as it turns out, there's a fairly good reason to think that [Thouin] is, in fact, an independent contractor - and it wouldn't have taken any longer for Janke to find that out than it would to repost the entire Elections Canada staff directory, thanks to the proactive disclosure requirements put in place by - pay attention, conspiracy theorists; I'm sure you can work this into the org chart somehow - the previous Liberal government.

We also give full credit to Jean Chretien for the new donation rules that have been a disaster for the Liberal Party.

According to the agency's records, ACE Thouin Consultant Inc. was on contract to Elections Canada for nearly two years, from October 17, 2005 until March 31, 2007. Filings for the last quarter - from January 1, 2008 onwards - haven't yet been posted to the Elections Canada website - they have until the end of April to do so, I believe - which means that, until that information is available, but it seems distinctly possible that Thouin was subsequently re-hired by the agency, perhaps for that very reason: to assist in the ongoing investigation into the Conservative Party's accounting practices.

OK, so a contractor is handed a court order to carry out.  I'm not certain what that means.  I'm pretty sure the police don't subcontract the execution of court orders to private companies.  And the presence of the RCMP certainly elevates this exercise in terms of seriousness.

But maybe this is common practise in Canada.

The nice thing about blogging is that I can raise the point that Thouin is not an employee, Kady brings her skills and knowledge to confirm that and to explain his likely relationship, and perhaps yet another reader can confirm whether or not this is typically done.

It's all about the connections.

After all, as the Montreal Gazette's Elizabeth Thompson pointed out earlier this week, this may well be the same Andre Thouin who, as a former RCMP commissioner, made a cameo appearance during the Gomery inquiry to deliver testimony that wasn't exactly helpful to the Liberal Party. Presumably, that would be sufficient "experience" to assuage Janke's stated concern over Elections Canada and/or the RCMP allowing an outsider to play an active role in such a "sensitive" operation.

Well, that's not quite a connection I would make.  Thouin's appearance had to do with a request for money the RCMP had made to put on a horsemanship display.  It had nothing to do with elections.  That his testimony did not help the Liberals doesn't mean anything in this context.  I'm curious to know that Thouin, not being a senior analyst within Elections Canada, is knowledgeable enough to recognize relevant information in all the material that he had access to in the Conservative Party offices.

That's why I've not mentioned Thouin's connection to Gomery until now.  It just didn't seem relevant.  It still isn't.

But now that we know a bit more about Thouin, I'm curious about the the exact nature of services he provides to Elections Canada:

Other professional services

So what are other professional services?  There are two contracts that start and end at the same time for the same amount:

• 2005-10-07 LAMOTHE, RONALD 0499 – Other professional services $115,132.00
• 2005-10-17 ACE THOUIN CONSULTANT INC. 0499 – Other professional services $115,132.00

There is a Ronald Lamothe who was formerly with the Ottawa-Carleton Regional Police Service, where he was an Inspector with the Professional Standards Branch.  My gut tells me this is the same guy.  Let's assume I'm right.

Thouin and Lamothe contract out as inspectors for Elections Canada.  They're former police officers, not electioneering experts, though hopefully they've been given the training necessary to execute a highly technical search warrant like one that specifies the removal of documentation relevant to money transfers between riding associations.

As Kady points out, the contracts for both Thouin and Lamothe expired at the end of March last year.  Three reporting periods have come and gone, and neither have been re-signed.

Was Thouin re-hired just for this one job?  If so, when was the contract signed?  It might be interesting to know when Elections Canada decided that they needed Thouin back on the payroll.

On the other hand, if there was no contract in place when Thouin knocked on the doors of Conservative Party headquarters...what does that mean to the execution of the search warrant?

Uh-oh, this is when Kady would say I need to be fitted for my tinfoil hat.

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