Cariboo-Prince George MP Dick Harris remains confident the Conservative party will emerge vindicated once further legal action on the so-called "in-and-out" campaign funding scheme is concluded.
The Federal Court of Appeal overturned last week a lower court ruling in favour of the Conservatives, finding Elections Canada was instead reasonable to reject the way the party reported national advertising expenses for the 2006 election.
"Now we've got one on either side and we're going to pursue it now to what I guess will be a final court case and we believe that we will certainly win it because the provisions were there," Harris said Tuesday from Ottawa.
Such rulings cannot be automatically appealed to the Supreme Court of Canada; the party must seek leave to appeal.
When the national campaign had reached its spending limit, excess funds of about $1.3 million were distributed to 67 Conservative candidates - including Harris and then Prince George-Peace River MP Jay Hill - who were still short of the limits for their local campaigns to pay for television ads that were largely identical to the national ones.
"The regulations were in place that allowed it," Harris maintained. "We did it, we transferred the money to the riding to buy national advertising that was given a local tag and we ran that in our riding, not outside our riding."
The Conservatives say the strategy was legal at the time. They argue Elections Canada changed its interpretation of the rules after the 2006 election so the party didn't do it again in the 2008 election.
In all, Harris spent about $84,000 during the 2006 election of which $30,000 was covered through the scheme. Hill spent $62,000 of which $15,000 was paid by the national campaign. Both readily admitted to participating when the story first broke in March 2008.
The situation did not sit well with Lois Boone, the NDP's candidate in Prince George-Peace River.
"There is no question that it was wrong, they just found ways to get around election spending," she said. "Rules are there to make it so that parties can't get around those things."
Boone noted local campaign expenses are reimbursed by the taxpayer.
Elections Canada reimburses all candidates 60 per cent of their eligible expenses if they meet a certain threshold of votes and that money comes from the public purse.
- with files from The Canadian Press
