The Pacific Scandal was a political scandal in Canada arising from private interests paying large sums of money to the Conservative Party at a time when the party was in power. The money was said to cover the party's election expenses in the 1872 Canadian federal election but accusations were made that in return, the government influenced the bidding for a national railway construction contract. As part of British Columbia's 1871 agreement to join the Canadian Confederation, the federal government had agreed to build a transcontinental railway linking the seaboard of British Columbia to the other provinces in Eastern and central Canada.