NDP cries foul over $2.75M bill it must pay
Reimbursement ruling to taxpayers for staff salaries was ‘slapdash, poorly done’
OTTAWA— The New Democrats argue the $2.75 million they are being ordered to reimburse in salaries paid to staffers working in satellite offices in Toronto and Quebec exaggerates the amount of time they actually spent there.
“It’s so slapdash and poorly done,” NDP House leader Peter Julian told reporters following the weekly caucus meeting Wednesday as he argued the secretive Board of Internal Economy has been overtaken by partisanship.
The multi-party board revealed Tuesday night that 68 MPs — including former Toronto NDP MP Olivia Chow — are being held personally responsible for repaying a total of $2.75 million in salary costs incurred by staffers working in socalled satellite offices set up in Toronto, Montreal and Quebec City following the 2011 election. A source said that includes $400,000 for the Opposition leader’s office, encompassing the time spent there by both current NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair and former interim leader Nycole Turmel.
The source said the NDP House leaders owe a total of $190,000, the NDP whips owe a total of $36,000 and Montreal-area NDP MPs Alexandre Boulerice and Isabelle Morin are on the hook for $120,000 and $170,000, respectively. Eight Toronto-area NDP MPs who pooled their parliamentary office budgets to cover the salaries of staffers working at a satellite office based out of the same building on Yonge St. as the Toronto Star will also receive bills, said the source, including Chow, who is on the hook for about $1,200.
The NDP argues the numbers are vastly inflated because they include salary costs for staffers the whole time they have been working for the NDP, even if they only spent a small fraction of that time working in a satellite office.
One NDP source gave the example of New Democrat MP Dan Harris (Scarborough Southwest), who is being ordered to repay about $140,000. The New Democrat source said that figure includes the salary paid to a staffer during his time working in the constituency office, not just the satellite office.
“When they throw things together like that, then it makes it more difficult for it to stand up in court,” Julian said.
The NDP has asked the Federal Court for a judicial review of the August decision by the board that spending House of Commons money on satellite offices broke the rules, as well as an earlier ruling that the NDP improperly used $1.17 million in parliamentary funds to deliver partisan mail-outs to about two dozen ridings.
Lawyers for the NDP and the board began negotiating an out-of-court settlement last November, a process that is ongoing. Chief government whip MP John Duncan, who is one of the Conservative MPs on the Board of Internal Economy, said MPs who believe the amounts are wrong do have recourses.
“The letters are being sent to individual members. If the individual members have an issue, they can deal with House Administration,” Duncan told reporters Wednesday.
Apart from their issue with the specific figures, the NDP maintains they did nothing wrong by pooling their parliamentary office budgets to hire staffers to work in satellite offices to handle things like mail-outs and media relations at a regional level.
Their Conservative and Liberal rivals, who together outnumber the NDP on the multi-party board of internal economy, see things differently.
“I think it represents a really bad error of judgment on their part. It was a clear violation of the rules. They thought they could get away with it,” Conservative cabinet minister Jason Kenney said Wednesday.