The Conservatives and New Democrats released new campaign-style ads Monday, while opposition members used Parliament's return to hammer the government over allegations that senior Tory officials violated elections laws.

Members of Parliament returned to the House Monday after a week-long break and the Liberals and NDP wasted no time jumping on news that broke late last week that Elections Canada has laid charges against four senior Conservatives.

CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife reported Thursday that the charges relate to allegations the Tories exceeded their national advertising expenses by $1.3 million during the 2006 vote. It's alleged that the party improperly reported the shared expenses of 67 candidates.

"Last week, four members of the prime minister's inner circle were accused of serious allegations in connection to Canada's election law," Ignatieff said Monday during question period.

"This is the result of years of investigation by Elections Canada and the public prosecutor. (The) question for the prime minister and the government is do they not understand that playing fast and loose with Canada's election law undermines Canadian democracy?"

Both Ignatieff and Liberal MP Marc Garneau, as well as NDP Leader Jack Layton, asked repeated questions of the government related to the election law charges, all of which were met with the same answer by Tory MP Pierre Poilievre, parliamentary secretary to Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

"This is a debate between us and Elections Canada," Poilievre said in both French and English. "It's been going on for five years. Luckily, the federal court has ruled in favour of the Conservatives and against Elections Canada."

The charges are not criminal ones, but a guilty verdict can lead to a $1,000 fine, three months in jail, or both.

The four Conservatives facing charges are:

• Sen. Doug Finley, a former campaign manager
• Sen. Irving Gerstein, a chief party fundraiser
• Michael Donison, the party's former executive director
• Susan Kehoe, a senior Conservative staffer

Elections Canada alleges the Tories used a so-called "in-and-out" scheme to exceed the spending limit based on rebates on expenses that had not actually been incurred.

The charges are separate from a civil case the Conservatives launched against Elections Canada over the same financing questions. In that case, the Federal Court ordered Elections Canada to reimburse to Conservative candidates for their ad expenses. Elections Canada appealed that ruling, as did the Tories.

Layton called on the prime minister to "do some house cleaning" and turf the two senators who are facing charges out of the Upper Chamber.

He also accused the government of failing to censure officials accused of misconduct, referencing also the ongoing scandal swirling around International Co-Operation Minister Bev Oda.

House Speaker Peter Milliken is in the midst of deciding whether Oda should be censured for her actions, or whether her conduct should be examined by a House of Commons committee. At the moment, it is not clear how Milliken will rule.

Oda recently admitted to having a staff member alter a document in a way that prevented a church-based foreign aid group called Kairos from receiving funding from the Canadian International Development Agency.

The Tories have defended Oda, saying that it is the minister's prerogative to overrule the recommendations of her officials.

Government House Leader John Baird praised Oda's work Monday, telling the House that she was "entitled" to make the decision not to award $7 million to Kairos.

"This minister has done an outstanding job in Africa, an outstanding job promoting the rights of women and children in Afghanistan, and when the people of Haiti needed a friend, they certainly had one in this minister," Baird told question period.

Opposition parties maintain that Oda misled the House of Commons before she admitted her role in altering the document, when she said that it was CIDA that decided not to give any money to Kairos, and not the minister herself.

Despite the controversy that has raged in the Commons over the minister and the document, the public appears to have hardly noticed the day-to-day battles between Oda and the opposition. A recent poll suggests that half of Canadians, in fact, had not even heard about the story.

NDP pushes Tories on proposals

Monday also marked the release of a new series of ads from both the Tories and the New Democrats.

The new Tory ads were of two distinctly different styles -- one was a monologue narrated by Harper, while the other was a clear attack ad targeting Ignatieff's approach to taxation and job creation.

Meanwhile, the NDP is unveiling a new series of ads starring Layton that are designed to draw attention to the economic and social challenges that Canadians are facing and to put pressure on the government to fix them.

"These days, lobbyists, senators and insiders are getting all the breaks, while more and more seniors are struggling just to pay their bills," Layton says in one of three new ads that can be viewed on the NDP website.

"We have to do better. It's time to roll up our sleeves, put the partisan games aside, and start getting results."

Outside of the television ads, the NDP have called for $2 billion worth of proposals to be included in the upcoming budget, including a beefed-up Canada Pension Plan and Guaranteed Income Supplement, a revival of the home eco retro-fit program and the abolition of a federal sales tax on home heating fuel.

The NDP says its newly released ads "will increase pressure" on the prime minister to adopt their proposals in the forthcoming budget.

A release from the party says the televised, English-language ads will run across the country for the rest of the week. The party will release French-language ads next week.

Fife said the decision to buy such an expensive series of ads is a sure sign that the NDP expects that an election is near.

"We're really into an election now when you see the NDP starting to run ads," Fife said.

Layton says an election is a real possibility if the government does not take his party's suggestions seriously.

"If the prime minister's serious about getting things done, he has concrete New Democrat proposals in front of him," Layton said in a statement released Monday.

"If he's not willing to work with others, he should know that New Democrats are well prepared to fight an election."

With files from The Canadian Press