Ottawa Councillor Alex Cullen says an investigation into who faked his name on a pro-pesticide e-mail petition has exposed the culprit: fellow councillor Maria McRae.
Ms. McRae confirmed yesterday that she entered Mr. Cullen's name on the website that carries the petition, but said it was a misunderstanding.
City staff have cleared her of intentional wrongdoing.
The affair, which Councillor Rick Chiarelli later described as a "Keystone drama," began last month during debate on a proposed partial ban on pesticides, which was ultimately defeated by council.
The website, propertyrights.ca, which was advertised by pesticide supporters, offered an easy way to send e-mails to every member of city council, asking them to vote against the ban.
Soon after the campaign began, Mr. Cullen, a leading supporter of the ban, was shocked to find one of the anti-ban form letters from the site appeared to come from his own e-mail address.
At first, Mr. Cullen assumed that when he visited propertyrights.ca, the website must have stolen his e-mail identity. Later, he realized the explanation was much simpler: Anyone visiting the website was able to type in any e-mail address they chose, and have it appear that that address was the origin of the petition message.
It became clear someone other than Mr. Cullen had typed his e-mail address into the site.
After Mr. Cullen complained, city staff investigated. Computer logs showed that although the e-mail petition with Mr. Cullen's name could have originated from any computer with Internet access, it actually came from a computer at City Hall.
It was traced to the computer that sits on the desk of Ms. McRae.
Yesterday, in an e-mail to Ms. McRae and copied to reporters, Mr. Cullen said he was "doubly disappointed to learn that you, a council colleague, used my name to author a message you knew did not represent my position and then, when the matter became public more than three weeks ago, you did not acknowledge your role in this matter."
Ms. McRae said she was taken by surprise by Mr. Cullen's reaction to an unintentional occurrence. She said when she first learned about the property
rights.ca website, through a notice Mr. Cullen sent to councillors warning them to expect a flood of e-mails, she visited the site and decided to test it.
The site allows visitors to send e-mails to whichever councillor they wish, so she chose herself to see what the result would be. She did not realize, she said, the website automatically copies all of council. A warning of this appears across the bottom of the web page. She said that she put Mr. Cullen's
e-mail into the separate "tell your friends" field on the site, thinking it would copy Mr. Cullen. She said she did this as a way to keep him in the loop on her experiment.
Shortly after, Mr. Cullen received the e-mail and sent out another to his colleagues, saying he thought his identity had been stolen. At that point, Ms. McRae said, she went to city staff and said she might have been accidentally responsible for the e-mail under Mr. Cullen's name.
