Secret Commons Board in stalemate with Bloc Québécois over House funding

The secretive and powerful governing board of the House of Commons and the Bloc Québécois are at an impasse over a request from the sovereignist party for additional research and staff to support its larger caucus following the 2015 federal election. The contingent of Bloc MPs is only two seats short of the 12 required for designation as a recognized party in the House of Commons, and to qualify for a minimum of several hundred thousand dollars in House funding for a dedicated research bureau, communications, and other support staff over and above the political staff already working directly for MPs. In an attempt to settle a stalemate that began after the new Parliament convened last December, the Commons Board of Internal Economy, over at least two of its closed-door meetings since February, has made decisions that would allow Bloc MPs to skirt House budget restrictions by pooling portions of each MP’s office budget to establish a devoted caucus-support office, including House-funded airline travel for employees. But interim Bloc Québécois Leader Rhéal Fortin said Thursday that despite the offer, with the last concession from the Board of Internal Economy contained in board minutes recently released for a March 10 meeting, Bloc communications and research staff continue to work separately for several MPs, including in his office. 'We have to work harder with less money' “No benefits at all, we received nothing, no money from them,” Mr. Fortin (Rivière du Nord, Que.) said in an interview with The Hill Times. “Each of us hires some staff that work together to help us for research and press and all these things, but we received no budget, no money for that,” he said. “There are no benefits, we have to work harder with less money, that’s it,” he added. The seven-member Board of Internal Economy is chaired by Liberal MP and Commons Speaker Geoff Regan (Halifax, N.S.) with three Liberal MPs, two Conservative MPs and one New Democrat MP as its other members. The government MPs on the board are House Leader Dominic LeBlanc (Beausejour, N.B.), who was on the board and in the thick of the battle with the NDP over satellite offices and impugned MP mailouts; Procurement Minister Judy Foote (Bonavista-Burin-Trinity, Nfld.); and the government’s caucus whip, Liberal MP and former Canadian Army general Andrew Leslie (Orleans, Ont.). Conservative House leader and former Commons speaker Andrew Scheer (Regina-Qu’Appelle, Sask.), who chaired the board before the last election, and Conservative caucus Whip Gordon Brown (Leeds-Grenville-Thousand Islands, Ont.) represent the Conservatives on the board. New Democrat House Leader Peter Julian (New Westminster-Burnaby, B.C.)—also on the board during the NDP controversy—represents the third-party NDP, which itself failed to win earlier battles for recognized party status in the Commons after electoral losses in the 1990s. The board used blunt language in its decisions authorizing the Bloc Québécois to use MP office budgets for party employees who would be located outside the offices of the MPs paying their salaries, with the deal including a clause stipulating that one of the 10 MPs would have to be designated as the employer of the office employees and registered with the Commons chief financial officer. Each MP who contributed a share of their budget would also have to report the contributions to the chief financial officer. "These funds can be used for employee salaries, hospitality, contract-related expenses and the purchase of smart phones," the board's first decision on Feb. 18 says. "Under no circumstances can they be used for expenses related to national caucus meetings or to purchase furnishings, equipment or office supplies." Additional concessions made As negotiations with the Bloc Québécois continued, the board later added the purchase of computers and tablets to the list of allowed IT acquisitions and in its second round of decision-making on March 10 said the "caucus coordination budget" could also be used to purchase office furniture and equipment. "Employees hired through this budget can work only in Ottawa and within the Parliamentary precinct," the initial decision said before the board, in its March decision, allowed the use of airline points for the employees to travel outside of Ottawa for their work. Quebec NDP MP Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont-La Petite Prairie, Que.), whose party lost nine of the 10 electoral districts the Bloc Québécois won in 2015, said “it’s ironic that the Bloc Québécois will have its central office in Ottawa, I would like to ask them some questions about that." As the NDP hung on to only 16 seats in Quebec in the 2015 election, Liberal candidates placed second in all but one of the Quebec seats the Bloc Québécois won. The board's deliberations are confidential, with the MPs sworn to secrecy under the Parliament of Canada Act. Its decisions and minutes are not made public for a month, at least, following each meeting. In the March decision, the board noted that "a solution to the Bloc's request for additional space has been found." But as of Thursday, Mr. Fortin said caucus employees were still attached to the offices of individual employees. “We asked for it, but they refused it, last fall,” Mr. Fortin said. “Now there is an opportunity for that, maybe we will. We have discussion on something that maybe we’ll finally take, but now, today, nothing, no budget, no office, nothing.” Green Party Leader Elizabeth May attempted in the last Parliament to gain an additional $60,000 budgeted for her MP office, in recognition of her responsibility to stay on top of a wide range of issues on behalf of more than 600,000 electors across Canada who voted Green in the 2011 election. “The resources of my tiny little office are the same as any other MP’s office, I always have people asking me ‘do you get extra resources, how do you manage?” Ms. May said in an interview. “I stretch as far as I can on a modest budget, we work really, really hard,” she said, arguing that resources for smaller parties in the Commons have steadily shrunk in comparison to the resources assigned the larger parties since 1963. That was the year, Ms. May recalled, when the dominant Conservative and Liberal parties of the day established the threshold that requires any party to have at least 12 Members of Parliament for designation as a recognized party in the Commons, and the attendant additional resources to work on behalf of their electors.

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Secret Commons Board in stalemate with Bloc Québécois over House funding

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