IQALUIT, Nunavut (Reuters) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper said on Thursday he was unaware of allegations his Conservative party had used dirty tricks to suppress votes to help win last year's federal election.

The allegations come at an awkward time for Stephen Harper, whose government is due to unveil a tough budget shortly, which will cut public spending. The Conservatives came to power as a minority government in early 2006, promising to crack down on sleaze in Ottawa.

Last May the Conservatives narrowly won a majority of seats in the House of Commons - some by very thin margins - which gave the party a secure four-year term and allowed it to start pushing through its wide-ranging right-of-center agenda.

Voters in several constituencies complained about automated phone calls designed to prevent them from casting their ballots.

The Ottawa Citizen newspaper said some of the calls had falsely told people their voting stations had been changed. Others, supposedly from opposition parties to their supporters, were insulting.

The Citizen said a probe by the independent Elections Canada agency into possible wrongdoing in 18 constituencies had traced some of the calls to an Edmonton, Alberta, call center which had been used by Harper and other Conservative candidates.

"I have absolutely no knowledge of any of these calls but obviously if there is anyone who has done anything we will expect they will face the full consequences of the law," Harper told reporters during a visit to the Arctic territory of Nunavut.

Last year senior Conservatives pleaded guilty to overspending on advertising in the 2006 election campaign that brought the party to power.

Pat Martin, a legislator with the official opposition New Democratic Party, said the calls were an affront to democracy and urged the Conservatives to reveal all they knew.

"Did they really win that last federal election? Or did they achieve their razor thin majority by cheating? ... (This) looks to be the largest electoral fraud in Canadian history," he told a news conference in Ottawa.

Elections Canada declined to comment. The call center in question told the Ottawa Citizen it had no idea its servers had been used for wrongdoing.

Jenni Byrne, the Conservatives' national campaign manager in 2011, said the party was not involved with the calls and "would never tolerate such activity".

I Steve knew this was going on (assuming it was) I will eat my boots. Anyone who would have told him is an idiot. On the other hand, he is in charge.

Personally I am more interested in the reactions of our own right wing boys and see how they try to defend Harper from this one.

Personally I am more interested in the reactions of our own right wing boys and see how they try to defend Harper from this one.

Lots of Conservatives in Ontario want McGuinty's and Matthews' heads over the Ornge and E-Health scandals. It's partisan hackery if they don't demand the same level of accountability from their federal government. We either hang our leaders for the actions of our civil-servants or we don't. Which is it?

"These reports undermine the reputation of Parliament and cast a shadow over the legitimacy of all parliamentary proceedings

The automated calls placed on election day 2011 were part of a deliberate. planned attempt by the Conservative Party to mislead Liberal and NDP voters, opposition MPs charged.

"The real issue is that there was a systematic effort to undermine our democratic system by lying to people about where to go on election day," New Democrat MP Pat Martin told CTV's Question Period.

During a heated exchange among Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro and Liberal MP Frank Valeriote, Martin suggested the calls were part of well-planned Tory strategy to send unsuspecting voters astray on election day.

"The really important thing is that 34 ridings -- that we know of and the number are growing everyday -- received these terrible phone calls advising people that their voting station had changed," Martin said. "And they go trundling down to this phony voting station -- some may never come back."

Del Mastro said the Conservatives are just as concerned as opposition MPs about the widening "robocall" scandal. In fact, he said voters in his Peterborough riding have been bombarded with automated calls too.

"The NDP has been robocalling my riding for a month about OAS (Old Age Security)," Del Mastro said.

You have evidence that Harper was directly involved in this or was your plan to simply post a partisan missive?

Or perhaps, did you mean that some CPC staffers, maybe some of them senior, are about to be caught in some election bullshit that they will hopefully be held accountable for but it is simply too politically delicious for you to [insert stupid partisan post here so that you look like some dumbass hack]