New Democrats denounced the secretive board last week for the decision—including payment of legal fees for a lawyer from the $1,000-an-hour environment of prestigious Bay Street law firms in downtown Toronto—saying taxpayers are footing the legal bill for what the NDP has labelled as partisan rulings in secret sessions of the “kangaroo court” that manages internal House affairs.
One of the MPs who speaks for the board, which is also using two lawyers from the Commons in-house stable of Parliamentary and legal counsel on the case, confirmed the board itself approved the outside legal fees, after Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer’s (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.) office told The Hill Times the high-priced outside lawyers would be paid through the Commons.
“Yes, obviously we did,” said Chief Government Whip and Conservative MP John Duncan (Vancouver Island North, B.C.), one of two Cabinet ministers who by law are required to have membership on the panel.
The NDP did not seek House funding for the legal fees it will pay as the case, involving more than 60 New Democrat MPs who have applied for a court ruling on the board decisions, goes ahead.
The board, and Mr. Scheer as its chair as well as in his role as Commons Speaker, retained Guy Pratte, one of law firm Borden Ladner Gervais’s most high-profile counsel, as lead counsel for the Federal Court case, along with one of the firm’s most accomplished junior lawyers, Nadia Effendi, who practises at the firm’s office in Ottawa as well as in Toronto.
Two lawyers from the House of Commons in-house legal staff, principal Parliamentary counsel Steven Chaplin and Parliamentary counsel Aleksandra Pisarek, are also on the board’s legal team.
Montreal lawyer James Duggan, who chairs the New Democratic Party’s legal committee, and prominent Quebec constitutional and human rights lawyer Julius Grey are representing the New Democrat MPs.
NDP House Leader Peter Julian (New Westminster, B.C.) told The Hill Times the costly legal battle that is shaping up could have been avoided had the board agreed to New Democrat demands for public hearings and full disclosure of any evidence as the board was beginning its investigation of the NDP spending in March.
The inquiry began soon after the board received written allegations from Conservative and Liberal MPs that the NDP was wrongly spending Parliamentary funds on a satellite office in Montreal, following earlier allegations the party had spent what turned out to be $36,600 for partisan flyers the board said did not qualify for House funding.
The board ruled the NDP MPs also wrongly used $1.13-million worth of Canada Post franking privileges to mail out letters and flyers during several byelections in 2013. Mr. Scheer’s office has issued a background document to news media with brief details about interactions between the NDP and House administrators after the NDP caucus established the Montreal office following the 2011 federal election, but no specific information about the MP flyers and newsletters has been made public.
“The Board of Internal Economy has caused us this problem by acting like a kangaroo court rather than [through] consensus, a system which is the way it has always operated up until this year,” Mr. Julian told The Hill Times.
“Acting like a kangaroo court where they decide that Conservatives are always innocent and the NDP is always guilty, of course that means that we have to go to a real court where there are rules of evidence that apply and a fairness doctrine,” Mr. Julian said in an interview.
“That is an important part of our judicial system and an important part of our democracy. The Conservatives have been absolutely inappropriate on this; there is no doubt, so if there are any legal costs involved it is entirely because they made appallingly irresponsible and partisan decisions,” he said.
Mr. Pratte represented former prime minister Brian Mulroney during a high-profile judicial inquiry that found no wrongdoing in Mr. Mulroney’s acceptance of $250,000 in cash from a lobbyist after he left office. He also represented Jean Pelletier, a former chief of staff to former prime minister Jean Chrétien, in a judicial inquiry into the Liberal sponsorship scandal.
Mr. Pelletier emerged from the inquiry under Quebec Superior Court Judge John Gomery without being implicated in any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, NDP MP Malcolm Allen (Welland, Ont.), one of the NDP MPs whose name is among the applicants for judicial review in the Federal Court cases told The Hill Times he was not only unaware of the board spending on legal fees, but he also has heard nothing from the board directly about its allegations over any MP flyers that went out under his name.
“I’ve got to be truthful, I didn’t know that, because when they say they’re secretive, they’re secretive,” Mr. Allen told The Hill Times last Friday.
“They don’t necessarily tell us who’s doing what. The only communication I have from them is this letter [listing the allegations], they have never spoken to me about anything, ever,” said Mr. Allen. “They have never spoken to me about it, they have never asked me.”
The NDP court applications allege the board’s secret deliberations and the manner in which the board judged the New Democrat MPs were based on partisan motives and violated principles of natural justice and the rule of law.
A judge will preside over the first hearing, to be held over two days in a Federal Court courtroom in Montreal, to decide whether the court has jurisdiction to hear the case, or whether Parliamentary privilege prevents it from interfering in or judging the internal deliberations of the House of Commons.
New Democrat MP Yvon Godin (Acadie-Bathurst, N.B.), who is not among the MPs the board judged, said the party is going to Federal Court to obtain the kind of independent review that did not exist behind the closed doors of the Commons Board of Internal Economy.
“I just kind of find it’s not fair to make a kangaroo court decision the way they have done it with the NDP,” said the plainspoken MP.
“Normally, when you go to court, it’s independent,” said Mr. Godin.
“In this case here, in the back door, they have made a decision, the Liberals and the Conservatives, to go after a party,” he said.
“That’s why we call it the kangaroo court, and that’s why we want the Board of Internal Economy to become open to the public now, because it’s total nonsense. And to make a decision like that, and the taxpayer will pay, not only a decision of two parties gong after one party, now the taxpayer will pay for those two parties to go after the NDP,” Mr. Godin said.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com/
Author: Tim Naumetz
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