OTTAWA -- Angry Conservative MPs attacked Elections Canada on Wednesday, accusing the non-partisan agency of leaking news of the RCMP raids on the party's national headquarters to the media and to their Liberal opponents.
RCMP investigators were at the national headquarters of the Conservative Party of Canada again Wednesday to execute a search warrant on behalf of the commissioner of elections, an independent office within Elections Canada. The elections commissioner obtained a three-day warrant which expires today to search the Conservative offices and seize documents and other material in connection with an investigation into alleged election advertising spending violations during the 2006 general election.
The warrant remained sealed under court order Wednesday.
"Somebody should ask who in Elections Canada invited the Liberal party to make a home video out of the visit to our headquarters. It's very curious as to why Elections Canada would make an invitation to another political party to be part of (Tuesday's) circus," said Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre.
Media organizations in Ottawa learned of the raid as it was happening and were at the party's offices in downtown Ottawa while RCMP conducted their search. Liberals say they learned of the raids from the news media and party officials videotaped the procedures with a view towards using the video in a future campaign.
The Tories' latest troubles come as a Canadian Press Harris-Decima Poll put Liberal support at 33 per cent, compared to 30 per cent for the Tories nationally. The poll suggests women are making waves in voting intention, sweeping the Liberals into their slight lead.
Conducted before the raid on Conservative offices, the poll shows the NDP at 16 per cent nationally, compared to 11 per cent for the Greens.
Just over 1,000 Canadians were surveyed April 10-13. The poll's margin of error is 3.1 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
Liberal House leader Ralph Goodale called the circumstances surrounding the raids on Tory headquarters "the biggest electoral scandal in Canadian history."
Officials at Elections Canada would not comment on the Conservative allegations and would not answer questions about the investigation.
But while most Conservative MPs were publicly impugning the motives of Elections Canada officials, some Conservatives privately questioned the wisdom of their own party officials for being too aggressive in "pushing the envelope" so far as Canada's elections laws are concerned.
In their view, a decision by party officials to take a hard line against Elections Canada and the elections commissioner precipitated the RCMP move. These Conservatives say they believe their cause is just but they worry that, even if they do prevail, voters will only remember the pictures of police officers at their headquarters.
The issue dominated question period in the House of Commons on Wednesday.
"A search warrant in Canada is not something frivolous," Liberal Leader St ©phane Dion said. "You have to convince a judge that there are valid reasons to believe that something illegal had been done."
Prime Minister Stephen Harper said allegations his party broke the law were untrue and he fired back at Dion. "The leader of the opposition has lost ground. He has thrown away his ground on all his issues and now he is just throwing mud."
Elections commissioner William Corbett launched an investigation last April into allegations that the Conservative party exceeded advertising spending limits by more than $1 million in the 2006 election. Soon after he did that, the Conservative party sued the chief electoral officer, Marc Mayrand, over the matter. Mayrand had ruled that at least 67 Conservative candidates could not receive taxpayer-funded rebates for local advertising expenses.
Mayrand said that the local candidates were claiming expenses for ads that were not for their own campaign, but were to support the national campaign. The national campaign has different rules and limits.
Mayrand's ruling that local ads were national ads effectively put the Conservatives well over the national limits, their opponents say.
-- Canwest News Service, with files from The Canadian Press
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