OTTAWA—A defiant Mississauga MP Eve Adams broke her silence Thursday, saying she is being subjected to a vicious “pile-on” in the media and has broken no rules in her contentious bid to win a new federal seat.

In an interview with the Star, Adams addressed new allegations of past irregular conduct the Star was preparing to report, as well as charges made by the Oakville riding association that prompted Conservative Party officials to undertake an investigation ordered by the prime minister.

Adams denied any breach of party or Elections Canada rules, and called allegations by the riding executive that she overstepped the bounds in trying to build support in Oakville North-Burlington “ridiculous” and “categorically false.”

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Adams said Jenni Byrne, a deputy chief of staff to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, approved her bid to run in the new riding and that she is using the same tools at all MPs’ disposal.

“All Conservative members of Parliament were provided with CIMS access to the riding that they will be running in, to the riding that was approved they will be running in, in 2015, and that’s been the case for a number of months.”

She “categorically” denied she has used publicly paid staffers to campaign for her during working hours. And she said she had cleared any use of Commons mailing privileges to communicate with voters in that riding “with Elections Canada and the ethics commissioner.”

“Everything I have done is in full compliance with all the rules. Everything I have done other MPs from my party and from all parties do and continue to do. There are dozens of MPs who are sending direct mail to their new ridings. Dozens. However, I am the one who is being pilloried in the media.”

Adams said she is still suffering the effects of a severe concussion she suffered in a fall on the ice in Ottawa more than a month ago, and sleeping 14 to 16 hours a day. Nevertheless, she said she spent the past two days making about “100 calls” and believes voters are backing her. She blamed political rivals, old and new, for making “categorically false” charges against her.

The new allegations include:

That one of Adams’ Mississauga constituency employees has accessed the Conservative Party’s central database to retrieve information on Conservative supporters in the Oakville riding during his working hours as a publicly paid employee, a move that Adams’ critics challenge as a misuse of public resources. Adams denies this amounts to campaigning, and says party rules allow MPs to retrieve supporter information at any time of day.

An allegation by Carolyn Parrish, a former Liberal MP and Mississauga city councilor, that Adams and her then-husband Peter tried to elbow Parrish out of a 2011 by-election race so Peter Adams could run.

Parrish said Eve Adams had initially encouraged Parrish to run and offered voter contact lists but three weeks later the couple said they’d merely wanted to draw out other candidates, with Peter Adams offering to “take care of” Parrish’s costs if she dropped out. Parrish’s version of events was corroborated by Mississauga councilor George Carlson, who attended the dinner in 2011, and said Eve Adams had wanted Parrish to run merely as a “stalking horse.” Parrish did not quit the race, but came second. Peter Adams ran fourth.

In separate interviews Thursday, both Eve Adams and Peter Adams denied there was ever such an offer, either at the outset of support for a bid by Parrish, nor three weeks in to induce Parrish to quit.

Eve Adams agreed with Parrish that they had once been friends and allies on Mississauga council, but that Parrish’s account was “a complete fabrication and “an outright lie.”

The Star has learned that during Adams’ time as a Mississauga councilor, an employee left her office and filed a workplace harassment complaint based on alleged comments by her about sexual orientation. The case resulted in a payment by the city of Mississauga to the employee for an undisclosed amount to settle the matter. The individual could not be reached for comment, but two sources with knowledge of the incident confirmed to the Star Thursday there was an undisclosed payment.

Adams refused comment, saying only that her ex-husband Peter Adams was in all meetings involving the individual. Peter Adams told the Star he’d been at a luncheon meeting from which he said the harassment allegation stemmed, and it was “absolutely without merit.”

“For me it’s been personally very difficult,” Adams said. “I am profoundly ill from the concussion and I continue to reach out to people and keep door-knocking.”

Adams doesn’t believe she has lost the confidence of the prime minister.

“He invited me today at the event (to announce a victims rights’ bill) and I felt terrible I wasn’t well enough to attend,” Adams said.

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Adams has also distributed glossy brochures in Oakville that cite the endorsements of six cabinet ministers and New Brunswick premier David Alward. Two cabinet ministers refused to confirm their endorsements to the Star, and the four others along with Alward’s office did not respond to repeated requests to do so.

Adams told the Star she sought those endorsements, they were hand-signed by the ministers in the past two to three months, and were all on the up-and-up.

With files from San Grewal

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