The Liberals suspect the Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) of using public funds for partisan purposes. Liberal deputy Marc Tanguay lodged a complaint about this on Friday with the Ethics Commissioner of the National Assembly, Ariane Mignolet.
According to the Liberals, this complaint originated in a document intended only for CAQ members which was sent by mistake to elected officials from all political parties. According to them, the commissioner confirmed that an investigation is open.
“We cannot use the resources of the National Assembly in the broad sense, the time of employees, computer support, for partisan purposes,” said Mr. Tanguay in an interview. The CAQ cannot use this to prepare for the next campaign. “
This document describes the training given to constituency office employees by two employees working at the CAQ headquarters, Sarah Dutrizac and Normand Chiasson. “Advertising in a political context […] a tool to support the steps of the deputy / candidate and of the party ”, indicates the text in this presentation of PowerPoint slides dated November 10th.
According to the document, the objective is to “reach out to voters to inform them and facilitate their participation in the polls”. The role of employees “in the advertising communication activity” is to “meet the specific needs of the campaign in your constituency”, we can also read.
The training also specifies that constituency employees can, as part of their advertising activities, make requests through Coaliste, the computer platform used by the CAQ. The document specifies that all “Assnat advertising placements” (National Assembly) must cease “after Midsummer Day and Canada Day”.
Decried confusion
All of this, according to Mr. Tanguay, accentuates the confusion between partisan advertising interests and what an MP’s office can do using public funds. “Everything you do with the resources of the National Assembly must be used for the population, not for the parties”, argued the Liberal deputy.
In his complaint, Mr. Tanguay refers to Article 36 of the Code of Ethics of the National Assembly. “The deputy uses State property, including property leased by the State, as well as the services made available to him by the State and allows them to be used for activities related to the exercise of his office », We can read.
At the CAQ parliamentary wing, spokesperson Marc Danis confirmed that the document sent in error to all parties was training for employees of MPs in their constituencies.
“We wanted to make sure everyone could follow the rules,” he said. We will not hide that we are approaching an election year, we wanted everyone in the ridings to understand what they can do as a member of Parliament. “
According to Danis, the goal was to avoid any confusion between partisan advertising and what MPs can legitimately do with public funds.
“We wanted to make sure that everyone understood their role in the riding and knew what an MP’s advertisement was and what differentiated it from a partisan advertisement,” he said.
Mr. Danis was unable to explain why nothing in the document specifies the criteria for making this distinction. “I didn’t take part in this webinar,” he said. It is a PowerPoint to support the training, it means that other information could be given in addition. “
The political attaché says that it is impossible to obtain reimbursements for partisan advertising from the National Assembly. “There is never partisan advertising that will be done with public funds at the base,” assured Mr. Danis.
In addition, Mr. Tanguay was surprised that the training requires constituency employees to have produced a media plan by February 2022. “I find that they are quite early,” a- he said, alluding to the calling of elections which are not scheduled before October 2022.