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The most controversial part of the new bill will be the structural changes to Elections Canada, an agency that many Conservatives feel is biased against them.

The new bill will propose to remove the decision on whether investigations should be launched from the office of the Chief Electoral Officer, Marc Mayrand, and hand it to a new panel independent of the government and Elections Canada.

One MP said that election campaigns are staffed by volunteers and mistakes happen. “It’s important to distinguish between mistakes and illegality. The problem at the moment is that there are no checks on the authority of the Chief Electoral Officer – he’s responsible to Parliament but, in reality, he doesn’t answer to anyone.”

The Conservative Party is currently at the centre of the robocalls affair that sent hundreds of opposition supporters to the wrong polling booth in the 2011 election. Former Conservative staffer Michael Sona’s trial is set to begin in Guelph on June 2. Meanwhile, MP Dean Del Mastro, a former parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister, is facing charges over alleged campaign finance violations from the 2008 election.

From the files: Marc Mayrand speaking about his robocalls investigation:



Angry Conservatives point to violations by other parties, such as the NDP’s acceptance of $340,000 in sponsorship by union supporters that Elections Canada said violated political financing laws but did not result in the case being forwarded to the Director of Public Prosecutions. “There’s a double-standard in the system,” said the MP. “There’s a clear problem with the agency and it needs a rethink. The impartiality of the elections agency has to be beyond reproach.”