Elections Canada has finished counting all the receipts from the last campaign and the total cost to taxpayers for Canada's 40th election is $288-million, a 6.6 per cent increase over the one two years earlier.

Another way to look at it is that it costs taxpayers just over $935,000 to elect an MP.

Much of these are fixed costs devoted to maintaining voter registries, election sites and election officers, as well as to verifying results and policing the election act. But almost $60 million of this amount gets returned to candidates to offset some of their costs.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper called the election early, despite his own fixed election law, hoping to get a majority. He fell short of that goal but did pick up 16 more seats than he had going into the campaign.

— James Fitz-Morris