OTTAWA—Canada’s chief electoral officer has taken the rare step of asking for two Conservative MPs to be suspended from public duty over disputed expense claims from the 2011 election.

The two Manitoba MPs, James Bezan and Shelly Glover, say they have launched appeals over the disputed expenses and the Commons Speaker, Andrew Scheer, said he will not act further on the suspensions while the appeals are before the courts.

But this unusual, high-stakes request for MP suspensions opens up yet another battlefront between Conservatives and Elections Canada over the 2011 campaign, which gave Prime Minister Stephen Harper his majority government.

It is becoming clear that the 2011 election may well become the most-revisited, most disputed campaign in recent memory — especially in terms of legal battles between the ruling party and the body in charge of elections in Canada.

Conservatives were casting this new development on Tuesday as a case of “legitimate differences of opinion,” yet no one at Elections Canada was able to recall any other expense disagreements, at least in the past few decades, which had escalated into a formal request for MP suspensions.

“We’re looking historically at when or how often it may have occurred,” said Elections Canada spokesman John Enright, saying he couldn’t remember such a case in his 20-plus years on the job.

There have been no shortage of disagreements between Conservatives and Elections Canada in recent years, however.

An election-expense dispute resulted in the resignation and eventual defeat in a byelection of cabinet minister Peter Penashue this spring, while Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand and Federal Court judge Richard Mosley have complained publicly in recent weeks of Conservatives resisting ongoing investigations into fraudulent “robocalls” in the May 2, 2011 election.

As well, election results in Etobicoke Centre were also briefly overturned in 2012 after a court challenge by losing Liberal candidate and former MP Borys Wrzesnewskyj, but the Supreme Court of Canada ultimately upheld the victory of MP Ted Opitz when Conservatives appealed last summer.

Questionable 2011 election-expense claims have also swirled around the ongoing controversy over ousted Conservative senators Mike Duffy and Pamela Wallin.

The requested suspensions of Bezan and Glover come after a long-running, back-and-forth disagreement with Elections Canada over their official expense returns.

Enright explained the procedure this way: “We receive the returns, there’s back and forth, if the auditors aren’t satisfied, if they find an error, they communicate with the campaign. If the campaign doesn’t comply with the auditors, it’s kicked upstairs to the (Chief Electoral Officer) who officially makes the request and provides a time period by which they must comply.”

Rather than comply with Mayrand’s order, however, it appears that Bezan and Glover decided to fight the judgment of Elections Canada, and both notified the Speaker in late May that they were launching appeals.

Both MPs’ campaign returns included large sums of money transferred to their local riding associations during the campaign — more than $50,000 in Bezan’s case and more than $70,000 in Glover’s case, with little accompanying documentation to explain the payouts.

In a statement released on Tuesday, Bezan said this was an “accounting dispute” caused by changing rules at Elections Canada.

“Elections Canada approved my campaign returns for the 2006 and 2008 elections but have now changed their interpretation, which is not consistent with the Act’s provisions. Elections Canada is not being fair or reasonable in their application of the Act,” he said.

“My campaign will be challenging Elections Canada’s new interpretation and look forward to having our return properly adjudicated in a court of law.”

Glover issued a similar, if more brief statement:

“My campaign in 2011 complied fully with the Elections Act. Elections Canada has ordered that I claim expenses that my campaign did not incur, which is not consistent with the Act’s provisions,” Glover stated.

Neither MP was available to explain the nature of the dispute in further depth. In the Commons, Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre said: “These members acted in good faith. Due to legitimate differences of opinion, Election Canada’s interpretation of the rules is now before the courts. That is the members’ right to pursue and we support their right to pursue it.”

NDP MP Craig Scott said it was a case of Conservatives believing they were “above the law.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

The 2011 campaign is not the only disputed election in the acrimonious history between the Conservatives and Elections Canada either.

Conservatives also fought Elections Canada over how they handled expenses in the 2006 election, in what was known as the “in-and-out” case of transferring funds between headquarters and local riding associations — a battle that ultimately resulted in a $52,000 fine for the party and guilty pleas from key Conservative officials.

Harper himself fought Elections Canada too before becoming prime minister, when he was head of the National Citizens’ Coalition, on issues such as third-party advertising and controls over broadcasting election results.

Read more about: