NDP suing committee over $2.7M bill

65 MPs in legal action asking court to allow expenses for satellite offices

A group of New Democrat MPs has renewed its legal fight over the party’s use of so-called satellite offices by filing a new lawsuit against the House of Commons committee that monitors MP spending.

Sixty-five current NDP MPs are listed as applicants in the legal action filed against the Board of Internal Economy late last month. Olivia Chow, former New Democrat MP who resigned her seat last year, is also an applicant.

The application asks the court to set aside the board’s decision to demand $2.7 million in repayment of staff costs from party offices in Quebec and stop the House of Commons from collecting on the debt.

In February, the board found that the NDP MPs breached bylaws by using their House of Commons office budgets to pay staff who worked in the offices, referred to as satellites of the leader’s office or the party’s parliamentary research office, because they were not in Ottawa.

The board ordered House of Commons administrators to send an invoice demanding repayment of the money that each MP contributed to a pooled fund for the offices, amounts that ranged from $1,288 to more than $100,000 per MP. Leader Tom Mulcair’s office is on the hook for $408,000.

The House could begin garnisheeing MPs’ salaries to collect the outstanding amounts.

In the Federal Court application, the NDP MPs argue that the board’s decision was “unreasonable, arbitrary and incorrect,” the result of political bias and made in bad faith.

The board, made up of Conservative, NDP and Liberal MPs, reached its finding in private meetings without hearing from the MPs affected, contrary to the principles of natural justice, the NDP MPs allege.

“There is no legal basis for this decision in Canadian law or in parliamentary rules,” the application says. “The decision is illegal since members of Parliament are entitled, by law, to exercise their parliamentary functions ‘wherever’ and in so doing, are entitled to make use of parliamentary resources to accomplish parliamentary functions.”

Typically, MPs can use taxpayer money to pay staff only in their parliamentary offices or in their constituency offices in their ridings. But beginning in November 2011, the party began putting House of Commons-paid staff in space rented by the party in downtown Montreal and Quebec City.

The party maintains that these staff worked only for the Quebec MPs and were not involved in political operations, such as election organizing or fundraising.

The NDP is also facing a $1.3-million bill for the costs of mailings to constituents that the board last year determined were partisan in nature and a violation of the rules.