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The House of Commons paid a six-figure legal bill incurred by a group of Conservative MPs named in an unsuccessful legal challenge of the 2011 election results based on misleading robocalls.

Sources tell the Citizen that the House’s secretive Board of Internal Economy agreed to approve payments for fees incurred by at least six MPs who were named as respondents in the Federal Court challenge, which was backed by the Council of Canadians, an advocacy group.

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The court in 2013 had ordered the council to pay the MPs a total of $13,206 – just a small share of the $355,907 their lawyer, Arthur Hamilton, had sought to recover.

At the time, it was thought the Conservative Party would pay for the remainder of MPs’ legal bills, but it now appears that the House stepped in and paid at least part of it with taxpayers’ money.

In a May 2013 ruling, Judge Richard Mosley rejected the council’s application to have the results of the election tossed out in six ridings but still found evidence that electoral fraud had occurred during the campaign. He did not find any one party responsible but pointed to the use of the Conservative Party’s voter-contact database in misleading pre-recorded “robocalls” made to voters.