Anders offers proof he went to B.C.

Calgary West MP Rob Anders faced the media Thursday to answer questions about his abrupt trip to help a B.C. candidate and his failure to attend all-candidates debates in his own riding.

Anders, running for a fourth term in office, has kept a low profile during the past six weeks of the campaign, and hasn't spoken to the media.

Earlier this week he travelled to B.C. to help a Tory candidate who had been injured in a car accident.

• INDEPTH: Canada Votes 2006

Although campaign workers for Derek Zeisman saying they hadn't seen Anders leading to speculation he never went to B.C. Anders brought receipts to show reporters he had made the trip.

"I was in Castlegar, I was in Nelson, I was in Trail," he said. "We encountered some animals on the road and there was a mudslide..."

A Conservative party spokesman said Anders received 20 calls from constituents asking him to return to the riding, after he missed an all-candidates debate at the University of Calgary Wednesday.

His opponents called him arrogant and disrespectful for ignoring voters.

"I said to him, 'oh, they found you,'" voter Jacqueline Moore said after Anders knocked on her door Thursday evening. "Because it looked like he disappeared off the face of the earth. I also told him I wasn't too concerned about that."

Anders says he believes he'll take part in an all-candidates debate before the Jan. 23 vote, but said there are no firm plans.

"Campaigns are fluid things," he said. "They're flexible, so we do what we can to adapt to the situation.

"I think we're going to debate, but you know, we'll be called upon to help out in other areas of the campaign, and we'll do as best we can."

Anders says he's not the only Alberta Conservative MP who has left the province a virtual lock for the party to help other candidates.

The Conservatives won 26 of the province's 28 seats in the 2004 election, and all those ridings especially those in the Calgary area are considered safe. Most analysts also expect the party to pick at least one of the two seats it didn't take.

"I think we have five candidates in Calgary out and about, hustling around the country," he said. "We go where the help is needed and where the requests come from."

However, Zeisman has run into some controversy of his own. Stephen Harper said Zeisman, who is facing a charge of trying to smuggle a Mercedes Benz and 112 bottles of alcohol into Canada from the U.S., won't sit as a Conservative if he's elected.

Zeisman, who calls the charges trumped up, didn't tell the party he was facing them.

Anders, who gained notoriety after calling former South African president Nelson Mandela a communist and terrorist, was first elected in 1997, and has been re-elected in 2000 and 2004 with large majorities.