Gerald Caudhari/National Post)

With a Canadian election just six months away, the Conservatives once again run into electoral issues that don’t involve their federal counterparts.

Just weeks after losing the leadership of the opposition party, Prime Minister Stephen Harper has faced renewed criticism that he has an issue with how his party’s candidates were financed in the 2011 election.

The prime minister won’t say if he will introduce legislation to reform the party financing system but his recent trip to Toronto to address a crowd of voters suggested a much more fundamental problem than the usual partisan politics.

Harper’s speech on Wednesday focused on how he is getting the economy working, how he is making the federal government more transparent and how he can best lead Canadians. But his major pitch was about the electoral system.

“We can’t do that by making people feel like we are corrupt and have a rigged system,” Harper said in Mississauga, Ont., adding that he’s “very sorry” his party failed last time around to win the election.

[The federal Liberals, on a year high, remain a force in Canada’s election campaign]

The NDP seized on the Prime Minister’s comments, accusing him of hypocrisy.

“It is unconscionable that Stephen Harper is claiming that he’s sorry for a party that under his leadership failed to win an election. And that is a disgrace of an election loser,” party leader Tom Mulcair said in Toronto Thursday.

His government was defeated in the most recent election largely due to a drop in the support of progressive voters and young voters. The NDP is now trying for a new leader and it is widely believed that it would put forward a centrist candidate to run as the new party against the Liberal (though not the Conservatives) led Liberals.