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By Mark Kennedy

OTTAWA — Prime Minister Stephen Harper has come under fire for blocking a move in recent months to give Canada’s chief electoral officer more power to audit the expenses of political parties.

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As controversy continued to rage in the House of Commons over the robocalls affair, opposition parties pressed Harper on why the Tories refused to grant more leeway to the head of Elections Canada to probe party expenses for all elections.

Harper sidestepped direct answers to the questions. He insisted that his party is co-operating with Elections Canada into the agency’s current investigation into complaints over robocalls that misled some voters to go to the wrong polling stations in the election last May.

But Harper and his parliamentary secretary, Dean Del Mastro, refused to explain why — before the scandal even broke two weeks ago — the Tories used their majority on a Commons committee to deny new auditing powers to chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand.