OTTAWA - New Democrats are attempting to pre-empt a secretive House of Commons committee that they expect will find them guilty of improperly spending parliamentary resources for partisan purposes.
NDP members of the multi-party board of internal economy, which oversees Commons spending, will move two motions at the start of a board meeting later today.
One calls on the board to hold virtually all its proceedings in public, while the other calls for an unbiased investigation into mass mailings from MPs of all parties.
The multi-party board has been investigating almost 2 million partisan flyers sent by New Democrat MPs to households in 26 different ridings, including four that were in the midst of byelections late last year.
It has also been investigating the use of New Democrat MPs' Commons budgets to pay the salaries of staffers in satellite party offices in Montreal, Quebec City and Toronto.
NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said he fully expects Conservative and Liberal members of the board to use their majority to issue a guilty verdict against his party and order his MPs to reimburse the Commons for the allegedly improper spending.
"We're not going to be surprised — we're taking it for granted, frankly, that they're going to come out against us," Mulcair said following Wednesday's weekly caucus meeting.
He said Conservatives and Liberals have turned the board into a "kangaroo court" where only the NDP has been targeted for practices indulged in by all parties and where "there's no process, no right to be heard, no right to educe evidence, no right to see that the rules are applied equally to everyone."
Consequently, Mulcair said, the NDP will not voluntarily repay the money it's alleged to have spent improperly.
"The possibility of reimbursing is ruled out in a process that is as tainted as this one."
Conservative whip John Duncan, a member of the board, has said the Commons could garnishee the budgets of New Democrat MPs if they don't voluntarily repay.
NDP House leader Peter Julian sought unanimous support Wednesday in the Commons for the motions to open up board meetings and investigate mass mailings by all MPs. He didn't get it.
The NDP was planning to try again later Wednesday at the start of the board meeting, to which it invited the media. Board meetings are usually held in camera, with even the time and place of meetings kept confidential.
Earlier Wednesday, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau announced a private member's bill which would, among other things, open up meetings of the board.
If Trudeau is serious about that, Mulcair said he should instruct the lone Liberal member of the board to join NDP members in walking out of today's meeting unless it is opened to the public. Without NDP and Liberal members, the meeting would lose quorum and would have to be cancelled.
But as long as Liberals continue to act as "enablers" for the Conservatives, Mulcair said it would be a mistake for New Democrats to walk out alone and leave the two rival parties to gang up on them.
As he has done repeatedly since controversy erupted over NDP mailings and satellite offices several months ago, Mulcair insisted New Democrats have followed all the rules.
The Speaker of the Commons, Andrew Scheer, and House of Commons administration have contradicted NDP claims that they approved the mailings or the use of MPs' office budgets to pay staffers in satellite offices.
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