Seven Conservative MPs, including one cabinet minister, were among the
top ten spenders this past year on controversial “ten percenters.”Tory MP Kyle Seeback from the Brampton West riding topped the list, spending a total of $32,115.57 over the past fiscal year, which ran from April 2012 to March 2013, on flyers. He’s followed by MPs Bal Gosal, Brian Jean and Lisa Raitt, the minister of transport, who forked over $20,480.83 on the flyers in Halton, as the biggest spenders — all from the Conservative party.
Ten percenters are part of the regular form of communication between MPs and constituents. They are so called because they cannot be reproduced in quantities exceeding 10 per cent of the total number of households in a member’s riding.
They’re normally used for informational purposes, but have in recent years been criticized for being used as taxpayer-funded partisan political advertising.
The flyers came under scrutiny earlier this year when, after Justin Trudeau won his bid to lead the Liberals, the Conservative party designed ten percenters mimicking radio and television ads that said the new leader was “in over his head” — a phrase that’s now taken on its own life in the Canadian politics meme world.
A handful of Conservative MPs said they wouldn’t use the ten percenters, which are funded through by tax dollars, to attack the Liberal leader.
Partisan advertising is said to be creeping into other forms of mail outs, as well.
Back in 2010 the House voted on a motion to close a loophole in the ten percenter program, which allowed MPs to send the flyers to residents outside their own constituency. Despite this, NDP whip Nycole Turmel said Conservatives and Liberals were sending partisan letters and flyers to New Democrat ridings.
Not too long before the Tory war room pulled together the “in over his head” flyers, Turmel asked Speaker Andrew Scheer to rule whether the partisan mailings in NDP ridings were a breach of MP privilege.
Critics have also said ten percenters, as they’re used these days, are a waste of tax dollars. MPs expenses released this week show that members spent almost $1.7 million in total on the controversial flyers in the last fiscal year.
Stephen Woodworth, from Kitchener Centre, spent $18,992.73 over 2012 and 2013, although the Ontario MP said amidst the ten percenter controversy this spring that he wouldn’t be using the flyers.
“I always, myself, try to focus on policy rather than personality, but I know there are other approaches and I can’t tell other people what to do. But for me, it’s a different way,” he told the CBC in April.
Rounding out the list of top ten spenders are three members from the NDP.
Trinidy-Spadina MP Olivia Chow was the highest spender from the official Opposition, at $19,898.77. Christine Moore and Paulina Ayala rounded out the top three New Democrats.
The Liberals’ Joyce Murray, from Vancouver Quadra, led her party’s dollar figure at $9,553.89. Trudeau spent $554.22 in his Papineau riding.
There were also a number of MPs who didn’t spend a single dollar on the flyers, according to this year’s MPs expense report.
Over forty members of Parliament including Tories Stephen Harper, Keith Ashfield, Michelle Rempel, NDP’s Thomas Mulcair, Niki Ashton and Stephane Dion and Carolyn Bennett of the Liberal party didn’t spend a dime on ten per centers over the past year.
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