Canada PoliticsNDP fights back over ruling that mailouts broke Commons rules
The federal New Democrats are fighting for their reputation.
This week, the Board of Internal Review, the all-party committee that oversees Commons spending, deemed that NDP mailouts broke the rules on the use of parliamentary resources.
Speaker of the House Andrew Scheer — who is the chair of the secretive committee — has now directed Commons administrators to suggest appropriate remedies for the infraction.
The New Democrats are fighting back. They say that they consulted with House officials prior to the mail-out and are suggesting that they've tried and convicted by a kangaroo court.
"Under Stephen Harper’s Banana Republic Conservatives, due process and the rule of law are secondary to political gamesmanship," read a party statement.
"Behind closed doors, with no due process and no opportunity to review the evidence, the two parties transformed the BOIE into a kangaroo court. Ironically, this transformation is the ultimate misuse of parliamentary resources for partisan purposes."
They're also suggesting that the Liberals and the Conservatives are hypocrites — that they've also used taxpayer money for similar mailings.
The money that the NDP may have to pay back, however, isn't really the big issue here for Tom Mulcair's party.
What's at stake — and what explains the veracity of their defence — is that this ruling is another blow to the the party's holier than though reputation.
[ Related: Thomas Mulcair gets testy ahead of committee probe on NDP satellite offices ]
The Tories are fond of bringing up the 2012 story which claimed that the NDP was forced to repay $344,468 in corporate and union donations which were collected as “sponsorship” money for three separate policy conventions.
The party is also under fire over allegations that they used up to $3 million of taxpayer money to set up satellite partisan offices in Montreal and other provinces.
And now there's this story about the party mail-outs.
[ Related: Speaker says NDP mailouts broke Commons rules; investigation widens ]
For two years, the NDP have continuously railed against the Tories about their judgement, their integrity and their misuse of government resources — about their ethics.
By most accounts, they've done a good job holding the government's feet to the fire on issues such as the Senate and the Tories' alleged attempts at thwarting democracy. They have successfully made ethics a 2015 ballot box issue.
Unfortunately for them — kangaroo court or not — these types of stories put the NDP's ethics into question.
Are you a politics junkie?
Follow @PoliticalPoints on Twitter!
