RCMP officers and Elections Canada officials spent a second day searching for documents inside Conservative Party headquarters in Ottawa on Wednesday, a day after raiding the party's offices.

Elections Canada is pursuing an investigation into alleged spending irregularities by the Tories in the last federal election.

The Conservatives are alleged to have engaged in a so-called "in-and-out" scheme —directing money to local candidates, who then transferred the funds back to the party to spend on the national campaign on more advertising. 

CBC News first reported RCMP officers were seen Tuesday in the 12th-floor party offices and the 17th-floor mailroom.

The CBC's James Fitz-Morris was outside Conservative headquarters on Wednesday as the officials emerged with several boxes of documents.

The door to the party headquarters was under guard on Wednesday after dozens of camera crews — as well as a Liberal research team — descended on the offices to capture Tuesday's raid. 

PM 'broke the law,' Dion says in House

The Conservatives are accusing Elections Canada of creating a media "circus" out of the raid of their offices, which they have linked to a civil lawsuit brought by the party against Elections Canada.

Ottawa-area Conservative MP Pierre Poilievre accused Elections Canada of inviting the Liberal party to watch the raid unfold.

The Liberals said they saw the raid unfold on television and rushed over to capture the event.

Opposition members again pounced on the event during Wednesday's question period in the House of Commons, accusing Prime Minister Stephen Harper of concealing the true nature of the raid by saying it was linked to the civil lawsuit.

"If the Conservative party provided all the necessary information to Elections Canada, then why did they need the search warrant?" Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said.

The prime minister responded that it was the Conservatives who initiated a legal action against Elections Canada and the party was confident in its legal position.

"This is a legal matter between Elections Canada and the Conservative Party," Harper said. "It will be heard and resolved in court where it is appropriate to do so."

Dion countered that a search warrant in Canada is not "frivolous" and required convincing a judge that illegal actions may have transpired.

"What are the Conservatives hiding?" Dion asked. "He broke the law in the last election. He broke the law with his in-and-out scheme."

Liberals just 'throwing mud,' Harper says

Harper dismissed the allegations as completely untrue and mocked Dion for his refusal to defeat the government on numerous confidence motions.

"He has thrown away all his ground on all the issues, now he's just throwing mud," the prime minister said.

Bloc Québécois Leader Gilles Duceppe accused the Tories of ignoring their pledge to Canadians to increase transparency in the federal government.

"Will the prime minister not admit with the veneer of transparency, he is trying to control everything and perhaps hide the truth?" Duceppe said.  

New Democrat MP Charlie Angus called the Tories' election practices an "elaborate scam" to circumvent financing rules.

"Yesterday’s raid was not a publicity stunt," Angus said. "It was a serious police action."

Tory ad spending probed

Elections Canada said the RCMP executed the search warrant at the request of William Corbett, commissioner of elections. 

Corbett, who enforces the Elections Canada Act, launched an investigation in April 2007 after chief electoral officer Marc Mayrand challenged the Tory spending claims in the 2006 election.

The Conservative Party of Canada, having reached the $18.3-million advertising spending limit set out under the Canada Elections Act, transferred cash to 66 local campaign offices.

The local campaigns sent the money back to national party headquarters to buy local television and radio advertisements for their candidates.

Elections Canada says the advertisements produced through the local offices didn't qualify as local spending because they were too similar to national ads. 

The ads looked exactly the same as the national ads, except for small print or the names of the individual candidates.

Financial agents for some of the Conservative candidates later asked to be reimbursed for those expenses, which came to a total of $1.3 million. Candidates who get 10 per cent of the votes in their riding get a portion of their election expenses returned from Elections Canada.

Elections Canada refused, saying the party, not the candidates, paid for the ads.

The Conservatives maintain they didn't break any rules. Government House leader Peter Van Loan said all parties engage in the practice, which he said is perfectly legal.  

"Other parties do exactly the same type of spending," he said Wednesday in the House.

Soon after Corbett launched his investigation, the Conservatives went to Federal Court in an attempt to force Mayrand to reimburse the expenses to the Conservative candidates. That case has not yet reached a hearing stage, with the party and Elections Canada still filing evidentiary briefs.

With files from the Canadian Press