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The $2.7 million bill that the House of Commons is delivering to the NDP for their satellite offices is a bitter pill for sure, but it can't come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the way in which the NDP have operated since they became Official Opposition in 2011.  They insisted that they were going to do things differently, and well, that's certainly been the case but perhaps not for the reasons why you might think.

Upon their change of status following the election, the NDP gained a sense of entitlement and quickly ran roughshod over some long-held conventions within the way things operate in the Commons.  It started with things like office spaces long-time Liberal MPs who were once cabinet ministers were unceremoniously evicted from their Centre Block offices whereas convention would have allowed them to stay owing to their seniority and status making the NDP look petty in the process, but who cares because they were Official Opposition and they were going to be different.  Those new MPs who were being put on some of the organizational committees spoke longingly of trying to "modernize" things, doing away with some of the traditions and symbolism, and fortunately it looks like they didn't get their way, but the desire to start blowing things up was certainly there.

Changes behind the scenes were also happening, and the way things started to shift was perceptible if you knew what to look for.  One of the most obvious signs was the increase in the use of time allocation.  While it may look to the casual observer that this was just the sign of a controlling government that wanted to shut down debate at every opportunity, scratching beneath the surface and talking to those who were privy to what was going on recall that House Leaders used to come to agreements as to how long they would allow bills to be debated at whatever stage in order to say what needs to be said and then allow the debate to collapse naturally.  The NDP, however, would have none of it and so the government decided to start using time allocation as a matter of course.

This lack of backroom consensus in other areas of Commons operations leads us to where things currently stand with the Board of Internal Economy, and the problems of the satellite offices.  If you listen to excuses that Peter Julian and other NDP MPs make, they have been attempting some fairly hefty misdirection as to the justification for these satellite offices.  First and foremost is their excuse that the Conservatives run their own satellite offices, which is not the case.  Yes, there are regional ministerial offices, and yes, you can question about the current government's decision to open more of them over the past few years, but that's not a "Conservative satellite office."  It also mistakes the Office of the Leader of the Opposition as a ministry of the Crown, which it also assuredly is not.  Sure, it gets a few extra dollars thrown its way to be able to do a few more things in terms of staff and coordination, but it's not a ministry.  Why?  Because it's the job of all MPs to hold the government to account, and Official Opposition only means that they're the biggest group that's all.  Attempts to try and portray it as a ministry are frankly dishonest and distort the way the system works.

When Thomas Mulcair appeared before the Procedure and House Affairs committee to explain the satellite offices, he produced a photo that made it look like a Conservative riding association and a Conservative constituency office were co-located, when in fact they were several doors down in the same strip mall.  It was false, but they claimed it as "proof" that the Conservatives were doing it too.  That they decided to co-locate these satellite offices with party offices goes to the issue of perception, but it also beggars credibility to insist that no partisan work was being done by staff in the same office, particularly when it was murky as to what kind of "parliamentary" work was supposed to have been done.  Coordinating communications?  Setting up press events in the region?  All of this goes to the way in which the NDP have centralized their communications beyond what the Conservatives have done.

Now that the Board of Internal Economy has decided on the matter of the offices and come to a figure that should be repaid, the NDP have tried to again spin this as a "fine" which is wrong and that this is all a partisan "kangaroo court" where the Conservatives are ganging up on them and the Liberals are apparently too stupid to see what is happening and just along with it.  The problem of course is that it was the Commons Clerk who found that these offices and the salaries paid were against the rules, and tallied up by how much.  Trying to cast her as a Conservative partisan demeans her and the institutions of parliament.

So what's next?  The NDP are trying to take this issue to the Federal Court, but it's debatable whether the courts will touch the issue because it very likely infringes on parliamentary privilege.  The NDP wants to blow up the Board in favour of an outside body to lord over MPs and their expenses, but the logic of it boggles the mind.  After all, MPs are the ones who make up the Grand Inquest of the Nation.  They have privileges to ensure their supremacy, and empowering some group of outside bureaucrats does damage to that privilege not that the NDP seem too bothered by the damage that their intransigence and sense of entitlement has wreaked on the current parliament.  If ministers' regional offices are doing partisan work, then certainly that should be called out, but that doesn't justify the NDP breaking the rules, or trying to misconstrue how parliament works because they didn't get their way.

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