Liberals Call for an Investigation by Board of Internal Economy

March 24, 2014

OTTAWA – Liberal Open Government and Ethics Critic, Scott Andrews, sent the following letter to the Board of Internal Economy regarding taxpayer-funded NDP offices outside of Ottawa:

Honourable Andrew Scheer, M.P.
Speaker of the House of Commons
Chair, Board of Internal Economy
Room 224-N, Centre Block
House of Commons
Ottawa, Ontario
K1A 0A6

Dear Mr. Speaker:

I am writing to you in your capacity as Chair of the Board of Internal Economy as a follow up to my letter of March 18th, in which I expressed our concerns with the NDP office in Montreal which houses employees of several NDP Members of Parliament as well as employees from the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition / NDP Caucus Research Office.

I would like to draw to the Board’s attention, a job posting from the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition / NDP Research Office for an “Outreach Officer (Saskatchewan), Permanent Full-Time Position,” which is posted on the NDP website. The job posting states that the employee will be working in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Applicants are asked to send their applications to NDP caucus services at 131 Queen Street; a House of Commons leased building in Ottawa.

The job description lists a number of responsibilities, including:

• Assist Members of Parliament with outreach to their constituents and in organizing outreach opportunities across Saskatchewan.

• Coordinate with regional staff to develop strategic outreach plans to assist Members of Parliament to best represent their constituents

As you know, the NDP have no MPs elected from Saskatchewan, so it is hard to imagine how the employee could be assisting MPs with outreach with their constituents in that province.

Under the qualifications heading, the job posting states that the candidate for the position needs to have “experience in outreach, event planning, election or issue based campaigns.” Given the context of the NDP having no MPs in Saskatchewan, the qualification that the applicant needs to have experience working on election campaigns is troubling.

Any reasonable person who reads this job description may come to the conclusion that the NDP is using Parliamentary resources to hire field workers to prepare for the next federal election campaign, which would be a clear violation of the Members By-Laws of the Board of Internal Economy.

Additionally, the NDP office in Montreal which houses Parliamentary employees paid by the taxpayer to support MPs in their Parliamentary duties has been used in the following manner:

• As the address for an NDP employee in Quebec who organized an NDP recruiting day in Montreal, which was advertised in NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair’s  Outremont Riding Association bulletin;

• As the public riding association address for the Louis-Saint-Laurent, La Pointe-de-l’Île, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, and the Pierrefonds—Dollard NDP riding associations;

• As the location of an NDP election training session;

• As a location that members of the public can drop off membership forms and payment to become members of the NDP.

All of this together is a disturbing pattern of possible use of Parliamentary resources for party activities. I urge the Board to factor this information into any investigation that it launches on this issue.

Sincerely,

Scott Andrews, M.P.

Liberal Issues Advocate and Critic for Open Government and Ethics