Burnaby MLA Richard Lee is voicing concerns over a so-called NDP slush fund - money allegedly diverted from New Democrat constituency offices for partisan purposes.
According to a leaked correspondence from the auditor general, the New Democrats were pooling taxpayer money earmarked for constituency offices -in about $200 per month from every office across B.C. for several years. Roughly $460,000 was paid to Vancouver-Fraserview candidate Gabriel Yiu to conduct outreach is Asian communities.
"A lot of concern, from my understanding, (is) funding from constituency offices should be used for nonpartisan activities. If it's used for partisan activities, I don't think that's allowed for that purpose. I don't know why NDP offices are doing that," Lee said. "That's not appropriate."
According to the MLA handbook, public funds for constituency offices are not supposed to be used for partisan causes.
Lee said he's seen a lot of articles in Chinese newspapers authored by Yiu and signed as an advisor to the NDP.
"All of those articles were very critical of the government, speaking for the NDP," he said. "It's very political writing. If he's getting paid for doing that kind of work, it's really, really inappropriate."
The auditor general's office is not commenting on the contents of the leaked document, as the information was not part of a public report and is considered confidential. The only people who would have received the document from the auditor general's office are the senior management of the legislative assembly and the speaker.
Local NDP MLA Kathy Corrigan directed the NOW to Shane Simpson, the caucus chair, who is handling all media requests for this issue.
Simpson told the NOW the New Democrats did pool funds, but they cleared the plan with the financial controller, who administered the account.
"We don't believe we did anything untoward with this money," Simpson said. "All the money was spent on the caucus. Not 10 cents of this went to the NDP. There's no connection between this fund and the New Democratic Party. It's all spent on caucus member and caucus initiatives aimed at providing multicultural support to members and their constituencies."
According to Simpson, Yiu was hired in 2005 and paid about $50,000 a year for multicultural work before the pooled funds account was set up in 2007, so only $300,000 of the $460,000 paid to Yiu was from the pooled funds account.
"(Yiu)'s been a political commentator in the Chinese media since well before 2005 and has for over a decade been a commentator in the media," Simpson said, adding that Yiu was not told what to do with his own time.
"We were very specific in what he did for us, that was support for MLAs, it was advice around cultural issues and protocol in communities, it was coordination of events, those kinds of things," he said. "When we were doing commentary in the media as the NDP, that was done by members of the legislature."
Simpson said he gets $119,000 a year to run his constituency office, and the MLA handbook outlines rules on how that money is spent. When in doubt, one should ask the legislative controller for advice, which the NDP did, Simpson explained.
"We followed the advice we were given by the financial officer of the legislature. Clearly, the auditor general, on some issues, did not agree with the advice the controller gave us," Simpson said.
