Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand wrote to Speaker Andrew Scheer notifying him that Manitoba Conservatives Shelly Glover and James Bezan have failed to comply with the Elections Act because they have failed to file corrected returns from the 2011 election.
Scheer did not table those letters, and on Thursday advised a Liberal MP that he could look at them on the Internet.
Once the letters were uncovered by the Ottawa Citizen and Postmedia News, Liberal MP Scott Andrews raised a question of privilege and asked that Glover and Bezan be suspended immediately, as the act seems to require.
But Glover and Bezan have filed legal actions disputing Elections Canada’s ruling, and parliaments usually restrain themselves from acting on matters that are before the courts.
NDP MP Craig Scott, who met with Parliament’s law clerk on Friday, said that he is likely to argue Monday that the two MPs continue to sit in the House until their cases are heard.
“We’re likely to say that there is a right of access to the courts that must be built into the timing of the suspensions,” he said.
Scott said he is concerned that the party may seek to drag out the proceedings, as it dragged out a recent federal court hearing on election fraud, so the House should suspend the two MPs if the Manitoba courts find against them.
“If the chief electoral officer prevails at the trial level, that’s sufficient for the suspension to go into effect, regardless of appeals,” Scott said. “That’s my current personal view.”
Both Bezan and Glover told the Speaker Friday that they believe they are in compliance with the Elections Act, characterizing the legal wrangling as an “accounting dispute.”
“What is in dispute is the accounting method that should be applied to used highway signs, and that matter is before the court,” said Bezan. “This dispute does not change the fact that I have been returned as the member of Parliament for Selkirk-Interlake.”
Elections Canada auditors have been wrangling with the campaigns of the two Conservatives since not long after the 2011 election, asking them to file returns that comply with the rules the agency applies to candidates across the country.
Doing so, though, would put both candidates over the legal spending limit, and in sharply worded letters on file at Elections Canada, party lawyer Arthur Hamilton declined to accept Elections Canada’s interpretation of the rules.
If they are found to have exceeded the spending limits, their campaigns could face punishment, although it could take some time.
In a news release Friday, Elections Canada announced that Paul Gallardo, the official agent for former Conservative MP Wajid Khan, pleaded guilty to failing to comply with an Elections Canada order to provide documents to the agency in connection with Khan’s 2008 campaign. He was fined $400.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Stephen Maher
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