The New Democratic Party, the official opposition in Canada’s parliament, is responding to charges of wrongfully spending C$2.7 million dollars of taxpayer dollars.
Andrew Scheer, chair of the Commons’ ‘Board of Internal Economy’ issued a statement saying, NDP Members of Parliament “inappropriately used parliamentary resources for certain employment, telecommunication and travel expenses.”
An August 2014 ruling by the BOIE, said using parliamentary resources to pay for parliamentary employees at offices outside of Ottawa was an inappropriate use of taxpayer money. At the time the board said a dollar figure would follow.
Yesterday, the secretive committee, requested 68 members of the NDP caucus collectively repay more than $2.7 million in pooled funds that were allegedly spent on offices in Montreal and Toronto.
Professor Nelson Wiseman, of the Political Science department at the University of Toronto, says “the NDP is claiming that actually the other parties do things like this as well.” He says the NDP maintains “they’re being singled out”.
ListenNDP House leader, Peter Julian, said in a statement that NDP parliamentary staff only do parliamentary work, and it is for this reason the NDP has taken the entire matter to court.
“We are confident that these rights and freedoms will be upheld over the decision of a kangaroo court,” Julian said.
Last night, NDP MP Nycole Turmel, who is a spokeswoman for the BOIE, said none of the MPs or their staff had been heard by the Board of Internal Economy and that “multiple errors” have been identified in expenses cited by the board.
Turmel said that the “consensus” of the board is that lawyers for both sides can reach an out-of-court settlement.
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