CALGARY (CBC) - Conservative MPs continued to grill Canada's chief electoral officer Wednesday about why he is investigating their party and not others over spending during the 2006 general election, as a second day of hearings into the affair degenerated into partisan bickering.

Tory members of the House of Commons ethics committee suggested Elections Canada head Marc Mayrand was evasive in his replies and was using their party's ongoing lawsuit against his office and a federal investigation into their finances as pretexts for withholding answers.

Elections Canada is looking into $1.3 million in Conservative party ad spending that the federal agency alleges was illegally channelled via the campaigns of local candidates during the 2006 election.

The Tories, who are suing Elections Canada over the matter, maintain that all parties used the same techniques to funnel money between national and local campaigns. Conservative MPs at Wednesday's hearings in Ottawa repeated assertions that the Bloc Québécois had openly used the funding scheme in the past and demanded to know why Mayrand didn't investigate that party.

But Mayrand said he was reticent to discuss matters already before the courts, fearing it might compromise legal proceedings. That prompted outrage from several Conservative committee members.

"That's not the way we do things," said Ontario MP David Tilson. "I say, if we're going to continue on with this hearing, we be allowed to ask any question that we wish."

Szabo called a 'blabbermouth'

Tilson and his caucus colleagues flooded the committee with points of order, prompting chair Paul Szabo, a Liberal, to shut down the hearings at one point.

One Conservative called Szabo a "blabbermouth" but later apologized. Another described the hearing as a "Liberal PR stunt."

NDP committee member Pat Martin said the Tory attacks on Mayrand were worrisome.

"We're on a dangerous and slippery slope when the Government of Canada expresses non-confidence in the chief election officer," Martin said.

The day before, Mayrand told MPs he had asked Elections Canada staff to review the returns of all major political parties in the 2004 and 2006 federal elections.

The review, he said, found no evidence that other parties had employed the so-called "in-and-out" money transfer scheme that the Tories are alleged to have used.

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