Deny, Deny, Deny

"The bylaws are clear. Members of Parliament are accountable for any use of House resources. As such the House administration has been directed to seek reimbursement directly from the members."
"Today the board received and accepted the recommendations."
John Duncan, Conservative whip, House of Commons Board of Internal Economy

"None of this would stand up in a court of law. No bylaw has been cited as being broken. They're not pointing to exactly what was against the rules."
NDP House leader Peter Julian

The Hill Times photograph by Jake Wright    NDP Leader Tom Mulcair, pictured in this file photo on Parliament Hill, is under fire over use of a satellite office in Montreal and partisan mass mailings. But Mr. Mulcair insists the party has done nothing wrong.

But there it is; an all-party House of Commons committee tasked with monitoring the spending of Members of Parliament has reached the conclusion that NDP MPs broke free mailing privileges rules. The NDP has been asked to restore $1.17-million in charges to the House of Commons, claiming that the issue is one of Parliamentary rules that have been side-stepped.

NDP Members of Parliament had mailed out 1.9-million pieces of mail through the use of parliamentary franking privileges. In so doing they breached rules that hold mailings must never be used for partisan party purposes but only for communication with constituents.

The House of Commons was prepared to inform Canada Post which of the MPs' mailings were ineligible for use of franking privileges, and that it was as a result incumbent on the NDP MPs to pay those costs, as a matter of honour, though they could not be compelled to do so.

As far as the NDP is concerned, the Conservative and Liberal Members of Parliament on the Board of Internal Economy committee had conspired to embarrass them, using their majority on the board to turn the proceedings into a "kangaroo court".

And then there's the additional matter that was first brought to the attention of the House of Commons and to the public through investigative journalism revealing the practise of the NDP to use Commons staff working in NDP satellite offices in Montreal and Quebec City; clearly against the rules.

Should the board piggy-back another requirement of pay-back for the cost of staffing satellite offices since 2011 the double-whammy will put a real crimp in the ability of the NDP to use its financial resources in campaign expenditures for the next election campaign. It seems dozens of NDP MPs mostly from Quebec gave contributions from their House office budgets to pay for staff working out of offices in downtown Montreal and Quebec City.

Taxpayer-funded staff, in others words, who are supposed to be conducting their work within the confines of the House of Commons, were dispatched to work in party offices. "We've been following the rules every step of the way", insists NDP party leader Thomas Mulcair.