The Canadian Wheat Board election co-ordinator is seeking a legal opinion on whether several members of Parliament violated election rules covering third party spending.
The Conservative MPs sent letters to voters in the final week of the campaign urging them to vote for candidates who agreed with the government’s position in favour of marketing choice.
The letters were written on official parliamentary letterhead and mailed at taxpayers’ expense.
Election co-ordinator Ian Craven of Meyers Norris Penny said last week he had received several complaints from groups arguing that those letters constituted direct advertising.
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Under election rules, any individual or group spending money on direct advertising must register as a third party intervenor with the co-ordinator and present a full accounting of their spending in late January.
Craven said none of the MPs (David Anderson, Ed Komarnicki, Andrew Scheer, Randy Hoback and Kevin Sorenson) registered as a third party.
“We have asked legal counsel to look at whether that is a third party spending issue,” he said.
One person who believes the MPs violated spending rules is National Farmers Union president Stewart Wells.
He said the letters constitute direct advertising, just as a flyer sent out by the NFU urging voters to support single desk candidates constituted direct advertising.
“The objective of our flyer is very clear,” he said in a letter to Craven asking him to cite the MPs for violating the spending rules. “In the same way the objective of the material mailed out by (the MPs) is also very clear.”
Wells said that if the MPs’ mailout is not judged to meet the criteria for registering as a third party intervenor, then no one should have to register.
Earlier, the speaker of the House of Commons had rejected complaints by opposition MPs that the letters breached parliamentary rules by improperly interfering in the election.
The House ethics commissioner is continuing to look into another opposition complaint, this one alleging that the MPs violated rules that prohibit MPs from using their position to further the private interests of other individuals.
Complaints have also been lodged with the election co-ordinator raising questions about how the MPs put together mailing lists that appeared to be based on the official voters list, which is confidential.
However Craven said his office has no legal authority to carry out such an investigation.
“I asked the candidates if they knew where the lists came from, but I won’t be taking it any further,” he said.
Bill Woods, who won election in District 4, has suggested the RCMP should investigate how the MPs put together their mailing lists.
