News

The RCMP raid on Conservative headquarters last week was initiated to obtain information related to an alleged scheme to exceed spending limits during the 2006 federal election, documents released yesterday confirm.

Ronald Lamothe, the assistant chief investigator of the Office of the Commissioner of Canada Elections, was looking for correspondence, e-mails, invoices and advertising scripts, he said in an affidavit.

He also said in the affidavit – that was given by the Conservative Party to select news media – he wanted information related to the broadcast of ads, as well as the computers used to store and create the material.

“Funds were transferred into and out of each of the bank accounts of the 67 campaigns identified as having participated in the alleged scheme, entirely under the control of and at the direction of officials of the Conservative Fund Canada and/or Conservative Party of Canada,” CTV reported, quoting Mr. Lamothe's affidavit.

“The purpose of the in and out transfers was to provide participating candidates with documentation to support their reimbursement claims for these election expenses.”

Essentially, Mr. Lamothe said, the party was trying to get around the election spending limit of $18,278,278.64 by getting local candidates to pay for national ads – and then asking Elections Canada to reimburse the candidates for those costs.

The document alleges the Conservatives violated the Elections Act "by incurring election expenses that exceeded the election expense spending limit" by $1.1 million, CTV reported.

“I am aware that persons named in this information have made considerable use of e-mail as a means of exchanging information relevant to my investigation,” said Mr. Lamothe in his affidavit.

“I believe I will be required to use or cause to be used any computer system at the place to be searched in order to reproduce or copy the data in or available to those systems.”

The affidavit and the search warrant that were used by Elections Canada to conduct the three-day search of the Conservative headquarters, with the help of RCMP, were unsealed on Friday. The court would not release them to news media because there was not enough time to photocopy all 700 pages.

The release of the full set of documents is expected to take place today.

The material handed out to television networks by officials yesterday amounted to about 70 pages. Ryan Sparrow, a party spokesman, refused to explain when contacted by The Globe and Mail, why the Conservatives released only a portion of the documents.

According to the CTV report, the affidavit handed out by the party does not reveal much more about the case than was known already. But it does confirm that the search was not related to a lawsuit launched against Elections Canada by the Conservatives after the Elections Commissioner had begun an investigation of the scheme.

In releasing the abridged version of the documents to select media, the party hoped to give Mr. Sparrow, campaign organizer Doug Finley and party lawyer Paul Lepsoe a chance to explain the Conservative point of view.

In the end, the plan went horribly awry.

On Saturday night, Mr. Sparrow called a number of reporters to ask them to come to meetings that had been scheduled for yesterday at the Lord Elgin Hotel in downtown Ottawa saying it “would be worth their while.”

But media outlets who were not among those invited got wind of the meetings yesterday morning and began to ask what was going on.

When one reporter asked in an e-mail about the news conference, Mr. Sparrow replied: “No conference, not sure where you got that from.”

The reporter then flipped Mr. Sparrow back an e-mail in which he had told another reporter who was on the list that the briefing would be at “4:30 Lord Elgin, Boardroom 800. Embargo until 7:30 pm Sunday night.”

To which Mr. Sparrow replied: “I meet with journalists privately all the time.”

Shortly thereafter, the Liberals found out about the briefings and advised all of the Ottawa press gallery, some of whom were quite miffed to find they had been excluded. When they threatened to show up at the Lord Elgin, despite the lack of an invitation, the meeting was secretly moved to the Sheraton.

The first briefing for select television outlets took place but, by that time, the excluded reporters found out the new location and began to stake out the hotel.

That led the Conservatives to cancel all subsequent briefings, including the one they had planned with The Globe. And Mr. Sparrow, Mr. Finley and Mr. Lepsoe fled from the Sheraton down a back set of stairs.