Has Canadian politics ever seen anything like it?

The highest office in the land, the prime minister’s office, has taken on the look of a rogues’ gallery.

Charges against those in the Stephen Harper’s inner sanctum, past and present, range from influence peddling, to political sabotage, to breaking electoral laws to assorted other scams.

The latest to get the tag of dirty trickster is Patrick Muttart, the brainiac who served as the prime minister’s deputy chief of staff and more recently as a senior political operative. This week, he was singled out for leaking information in an apparent attempt to incriminate Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff as an Iraq war planner. A photo purporting to be of the Liberal leader was found to be bogus. Mr. Muttart, credited by many as a key player in Harper election victories in the past, was summarily dropped from the campaign team.

Preceding the Muttart revelation, Dimitri Soudas, the prime minister’s director of communications, was hit with allegations of political interference in a senior appointment to the Montreal Port Authority. Port-linked audio recordings have come to play in the story as well as talk of kickbacks. Mr. Soudas denies any untoward activity.

Before Mr. Soudas, it was Bruce Carson, a former senior adviser to Mr. Harper. He was revealed to have a criminal past and is now under investigation by the RCMP for possible influence peddling. The case involves alleged attempts by an Ottawa-based company which employed Mr. Carson’s fiancée, a former escort girl, to land water filtration contracts at native reserves.

Before the Carson revelations, charges of wrongdoing were brought against Doug Finley who served as Mr. Harper’s campaign manager and long-time top political operative. He faces charges in the so-called in and out affair of violating election finance laws. Former national party director Michael Donison is also charged as well as Senator Irving Gerstein, the party’s chief fundraiser.

In the current campaign, Conservatives have been caught up in alleged document tampering. The auditor general was found to have issued a reprimand to them for changing a document to make it appear the Tories demonstrated prudent fiscal management when in fact it was the previous Liberal government which was being commended.

Another embarrassment came in the campaign’s first week when Conservative operatives were called on the carpet for frogmarching citizens out of Tory rallies for no other reason than possible ties to other political parties.

On the eve of the campaign, Mr. Harper became the first prime minister in history to be found in contempt of Parliament. The decision followed an investigation by the Speaker of the Commons.

Mr. Harper’s former chief of staff, Ian Brodie, left the prime minister’s office in 2008 after being caught up in the so-called Naftagate affair which involved a diplomatic leak embarrassing to the Barack Obama election campaign. Mr. Brodie denied being behind the leak, the source of which has not been determined.

A review of history shows that no other prime minister has had so many top officials or former top officials from his office caught up in what opposition critics call political sleaze. The galaxy of alleged wrongdoing has called to question the moral character of the PMO.

Brian Mulroney and Lester Pearson’s stewardships saw many cabinet ministers resign over conflict of interest allegations or other transgressions. But their respective PMOs were not mired in muck. In Jean Chrétien’s term, senior public servants, most notably Chuck Guite, were caught up in the sponsorship scandal as were lower level Liberal officials in Quebec. Jean Carle, a top aide to the prime minister, was involved in several controversies and there were some cabinet resignations owing to ethical violations.

As for the Harper cabinet, former foreign affairs minister Maxime Bernier had to resign after leaving classified documents at the home of a girlfriend with ties to biker gangs. But while his cabinet members have run into some ethical difficulties, Bev Oda being a recent example, there have not been as many embarrassments as in several other governments. Instead it’s the prime minister’s own inner sanctum of advisers who have set this government apart.

The revelations concerning his team members may be a factor in the declining support levels the Conservatives are experiencing in the campaign. Mr. Harper’s personal leadership ratings are also declining, falling behind those of NDP leader Jack Layton.

More trouble could be in store for the Harper coterie. Three reports involving questions of controversy that could well have come out before voting day have been delayed for various reasons until afterward. They are the auditor general’s report addressing spending at the G8 summit, an independent study of the work of former Integrity Commissioner Christiane Ouimet, and the release of documents pertaining to the Afghan detainees’ affair.