Mr. Chairman, such a substantive question now deserves a substantive answer now.
With regard to the place of work, there has been a change that came into effect on April 8, 2014. There's a basic principle of statutory interpretation. It's best expressed in French.
It states that Parliament does not speak in vain.
When that change was made to say that you could no longer have someone at the regular place of work, the space owned, leased, or under the effective control of a political party, that's because it was not interdicted prior to that. So that's why that change was brought in. It was like trying to tell somebody who is just driving to the cottage for Victoria Day weekend in a 100 kilometre per hour zone that after they got to the cottage, it became a construction zone and the speed limit was reduced to 70, and that even though they had arrived before the speed change was made, somehow they're going to get a ticket.
We respected the rules as they existed, and it was implicit in Mr. Woodworth's question and I would like to get to it. For the space that we're talking about, the lease was 100% assumed by the NDP. I offer again—the cheques are bilingual as far as I can tell—I can certainly help them all, because we've had our services put together a copy of every single cheque. You'll see that the annual rent is approximately $100,000, every penny of which is assumed by the NDP.
No one questions the fact that our MPs' employees are allowed to travel back and forth. No one questions the fact that the OLO employees are allowed to travel back and forth. That's the very essence of the very first section of the Members By-Law. It says:
duties and activities that relate to the position of Member, wherever performed and whether or not performed in a partisan manner
That's the first article of the rules governing members of Parliament. It continues:
namely, participation in activities relating to the proceedings and work of the House of Commons and activities undertaken in representing his or her constituency or constituents.
It doesn't matter how you're performing it, and it doesn't matter where you're performing it.
To hear the Conservatives tell it, we would have had to have hired that staff here in Ottawa, as the Liberals like to do, and only talk to lobbyists.
We're innovating. We're working across Canada. We're listening to Canadians. Mr. Julian just asked an important question about matching the Conservative move. They're spending millions of dollars for themselves on these ministerial offices across Canada. Our job as the official opposition, as an integral part of our democratic institutions, is to hold that government to account. We can't do that if we're here in Ottawa alone.
No one would question the fact that they're allowed to work in Montreal. So the most interesting aspect of this is that if someone on our communications staff was organizing, as they did this week, a press conference in Montreal for Hoang Mai, our Transport critic, and that person was to help him, according to the Conservatives the best use of taxpayers' money would be to pay the kilometres back and forth to Montreal and keep that person working here in Ottawa.
Since it is allowed for that person doing the press relations to work in Montreal, there is nothing to prevent him from being based in Montreal. There was nothing until April 8, 2014, preventing him from working out of a space paid for by the New Democratic Party of Canada. After April 14, we had to make a change, which we did. We respected all the rules before. We respect all the rules after that change, but there was a change.
The amendment that I just read was a substantial change to the existing rules, and it's a little bit like my cottager who's going to be looking at a change in the speed limit. There's no way you can apply that retroactively.