No High Marks for Ethics/NDP

"At no point was the House Administration informed that the employees would be located in Montreal or that their work would be carried out in co-location with a political party's offices."
Document, House of Commons Board of Internal Economy

New Democratic Party staff were doubtless advised by high-ranking party functionaries that it would be in the best interests of the NDP were the staff to ensure that details that could impact on a new initiative to staff offices outside of Parliament Hill by locally-engaged NDP support workers paid out of House of Commons funding, be withheld.

House of Commons officials were alerted to the offices opened by the NDP in Quebec City and Montreal as "satellite" offices by revelations made in an investigative news report. NDP spokespeople insisted that using House funds was quite proper, and that they had been given assurances by House of Commons administrators that there was no problem.

The problem is that funding for staff out of House funds is meant in support of personnel working for Members of Parliament within Parliament. Documents, it has now been revealed, prepared by the House to be presented to its internal spending board of Internal Economy, indicate that the NDP had incorrectly advised finance officials of a protocol they had devised to pay salaries of up to 27 staff members.

That those staff members were located outside Parliament, in those so-called "satellite" offices meant, claimed the NDP, to bolster the work of the Parliamentary staffers, was never quite divulged to those who should have been given the full information. And for the simple enough reason that had they been aware of the situation, it would have been clarified for their edification that what they proposed was improper.

The party and House pay-and-benefits officials communicated about where cheques to the Quebec-based employees were to be sent; home addresses within Quebec, but the House administration insists it was unaware of the simple enough fact that these staff would be working in Quebec. Rather than the norm where staff paid by the House work on Parliament Hill or within MP constituency offices.

This deliberate subterfuge to manipulate the House of Commons administration into believing that what the NDP had planned was completely legal does no credit to the party. The NDP itself should have been paying those Quebec-based (and Saskatchewan) staff members since in reality they were doing party work, not constituency work for MPs, even while some of the funding for their salaries was drained out of MPs' office funding.

The document prepared for the Board of Internal Enquiry stated that the NDP's deputy chief of staff in 2011, when asked where the employees in question were working, clarified Ottawa. "Ms. Turk-Browne confirmed the employees would be working in Ottawa", stated the prepared document. When the House officials recommended the NDP hire those staff through its Ottawa research office: "Ms. Turk-Browne replied that would not be desirable since the employees are exclusively carrying out constituency work."

Unambiguously deceptive. It is hard now to see how the members of the Procedure of House Affairs committee, studying allegations of misuse by the NDP of House of Commons resources through their covert staffing of offices in Montreal, Quebec City and Saskatchewan, could come up with any conclusion other than censure of the NDP for unsavoury and unethical duplicitous manipulation to benefit themselves.

The costs of staffing the offices in question are considerable. They should not have been borne through taxpayer funding via the House of Commons, but rather through the fund-raising efforts of the NDP to benefit their political party. It is conceivable that a ruling will be made instructing the NDP to repay to the House the illegal outlays representing millions of dollars side-tracked from their legitimate purpose.