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OTTAWA — RCMP officers raided Conservative Party headquarters in downtown Ottawa yesterday to execute a search warrant requested by Election Commissioner William Corbett.
The police worked behind closed doors of the 12th-floor suite and at a mailroom on another floor. They were searching for information related to Mr. Corbett's investigation into whether dozens of Tory candidates improperly claimed advertising expenses that should have been declared by the national party.
At one point, an Elections Canada inspector emerged with a large portfolio of what he would describe only as “various documents” before escaping to an elevator.
It was a trying episode for a party that campaigned on a promise to clean up the corruption of the Liberal government that preceded it.
An unidentified man opens the door for a plainclothes RCMP officer at the Conservative Party headquarters in Ottawa on Tuesday. (Tom Hanson/The Canadian Press)
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But Prime Minister Stephen Harper fired back with a counterattack against Mr. Corbett and Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand, who is being sued by the representatives of the candidates for failing to reimburse those expenses – a suit launched after Mr. Corbett opened his investigation.
“The Conservative Party initiated court action against Elections Canada some time ago on the advertising issue,” Mr. Harper told Parliament during the daily Question Period yesterday.
“I also would observe that tomorrow Elections Canada officials were scheduled to be examined by lawyers from the Conservative Party. While today's actions may or may not delay that somewhat, we remain extremely confident in our legal position.”
As Elections Commissioner, Mr. Corbett is supposed to exercise his investigatory powers at arms-length from the Chief Electoral Officer, Mr. Mayrand, who oversees the administration of elections. The allegation that Mr. Corbett obtained a search warrant to influence the Conservatives' lawsuit amounts to a charge that he abused his powers.
Conservative officials would not speak on the record, but called reporters to point out, anonymously, that it was peculiar that the raid occurred a day before the deposition of party officials in the civil matter.
One of them said the police action underlines the party's long-held contention that Elections Canada's case against the party was weak.
Another said the Elections Commissioner had obtained the warrant to apply pressure against the Tories in their lawsuit against the Chief Electoral Officer.
“They may be scared of their case in court,” said the Conservative official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The Conservative Party sees this as a PR stunt and a tactic of intimidation.”
The Conservative official also said that Elections Canada has applied the law unevenly from party to party. The Federal Court recently rejected the party's attempts to file new material to make that case in court, after Elections Canada officials argued they were red herrings that were not similar to the Conservatives' case.
Both Mr. Corbett and Mr. Mayrand were appointed during the Conservatives' term in office.
Neither Mr. Corbett nor Mr. Mayrand would comment on the allegations made by Conservative officials yesterday.
The party issued a terse release mid-afternoon that said: “Today Elections Canada visited the Conservative Party of Canada Headquarters. This is related to an ongoing court case initiated by the Conservative Party of Canada in the spring of 2007. The Conservative Party has provided Elections Canada with all the information that they have requested.”
But Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said the Prime Minister and his party are muddying the waters by suggesting that the raid is related to the civil suit and not the Elections Commissioner's investigation.
“The Prime Minister is confusing two things: the civil lawsuit of the Conservative Party toward Elections Canada and the quasi-criminal inquiry of the commissioner about the Conservative Party. And it is this one that is involved,” Mr. Dion told reporters.
“I think all Canadians will be concerned by the fact that the government is not co-operating to the point that the commissioner had no other choice in order to fulfill his own responsibilities, his legal responsibilities, than to call the RCMP.”
Conservative officials, including government House Leader Peter Van Loan responded that they had co-operated fully with the investigation.
In what has become known as the “in and out” scheme, the Conservative Party transferred up to $50,000 to individual candidates who, in turn, gave the money back to the party for ads created at the national campaign headquarters.
If the TV and radio ads in question were in fact national in nature, the cash-flushed Conservatives surpassed the $18.3-million legal election-spending limit by more $1.2-million.
“I'm not surprised at all,” said Jean Landry, the Conservative Party candidate in the Quebec riding of Richmond-Arthabaska in the last election, whose campaign was audited by Elections Canada. “The truth will come out one day, and justice will follow its course.
“I swear on the Bible that I never received that money for local expenses. It was for the national [campaign], not for me. The money returned automatically into the Conservative Party account.”
The issue was first brought to public attention last August and the opposition has asked that the alleged scheme be investigated by the Commons Procedures and House Affairs Committee. The Conservative members of that committee responded with a filibuster that has gone on since early last fall.
The opposition members eventually replaced Gary Goodyear, the Conservative chairman, with Joe Preston, another Conservative MP. But Mr. Preston resigned from that job last week.
With a report from Omar El Akkad in Ottawa
