Mounties assigned to protect Conservative Leader Stephen Harper have turfed young voters with suspect partisan leanings from campaign events, putting the national police force at the centre of the most disturbing incidents to emerge so far in the federal race.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police admitted Wednesday that the phalanx of officers assigned as the Prime Minister’s bodyguards overstepped their bounds to enforce Harper’s closed-to-the-public re-election bid. Their transgressions include blocking and ejecting those whose only crime is to seek out the Tory chief’s election message without advance notice or sufficient party glee.

“The RCMP assisted the party organizers in restricting access to persons not registered for the private event,” the Mounties said in a written statement. “This was not in accordance with the RCMP’s mandate and RCMP members have been reminded of our responsibilities.”

But the force pointedly refused to say whether it was pre-screening those who registered to attend rallies, as at least one subject of the inappropriate aggression was explicitly told.

Joanna MacDonald, 21, tried to attend Harper’s Monday night rally in Guelph, Ont., after pre-registering online and providing her name, email, home address and telephone number. Her name was not on the list of attendees when she arrived and a party official told her the RCMP had flagged her as unfit to attend.

MacDonald’s sin was joining an environmental club at the University of Guelph whose driving cause is to end the use of bottled water on campus.

“Well, that’s why you probably didn’t get in,” she recalled being told by a local campaign organizer.

Another young woman in Guelph was ordered to turn her T-shirt inside out because it featured an environmental slogan.

Former RCMP public complaints commissioner Paul Kennedy said officers have to use judgment when walking the thin line between legitimate security responsibilities and partisan preferences.

“Are you protecting the Prime Minister, or are you being engaged in some other fashion as a bouncer?”

This isn’t the first time that the Mounties have found themselves in the middle of a campaign. In the 2005-06 race that brought Harper to power, then-commissioner Giuliano Zaccardelli ended up tipping the race into Tory hands when he confirmed an investigation into a potential leak from the Liberal government about a decision to tax income trusts, specifically naming then-finance minister Ralph Goodale.

A senior civil servant was charged with criminal breach of trust for using the confidential information for personal gain, but that was more than a year after Harper won the election. The RCMP watchdog later said there was a lack of clear policy around how officers should handle such matters during an election.

A spokesman for the commission said it’s received no complaints against the Mounties during this campaign, but that it is watching the election closely and could launch an investigation on its own.

Back on the campaign trail, the RCMP’s admission didn’t quell the criticism from the Liberal and NDP leaders.

“If he checks out your Facebook page and finds you have a few Liberal friends, you don’t get into his meetings,” Ignatieff said in Compton, Que. “That’s the politics of friend and foe. I despise it. I oppose it.”

On Sunday evening, two young women were yanked out of a London rally after one of them was discovered to have posed for a picture with the Liberal leader that was posted to her Facebook site. Despite a Harper spokesman’s apology for the “inconvenience” in London, the issue threatens to overtake the Conservative campaign’s daily message that a vote for the Tories is a vote for stability in an uncertain world.

The incidents have the Liberals accusing the Tories of “Facebook creeping.”

“Imagine taking a person’s name and then searching on Facebook to see who their friends are before you decide whether they can come into a meeting,” said NDP Leader Jack Layton. “I think most Canadians would find that absolutely outrageous.”

Harper doesn’t appear outraged despite being asked for two days why members of the public have been barred from his events. Instead, on his first of a three-day swing through several GTA ridings, he claimed that his events are drawing bigger crowds than his opponents, though he offered no supporting evidence.

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“It’s better when you’re turning people away than when you can’t get people to come,” Harper said.

The nightly Conservative campaign rally was held Wednesday in the Ajax-Pickering riding currently held by the Liberals. Held at the sprawling Deer Creek golf course in a bid to elect former ambassador to Afghanistan Chris Alexander, there was not a protesting soul in sight.

With files from Bruce Campion-Smith and Richard J. Brennan

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