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A New Democrat MP's family Christmas trip cost Canadian taxpayers more than $17,000, a CBC investigation has found.
The station reported that Niki Ashton, MP for Churchill-Keewatinook-Aski in northern Manitoba, billed taxpayers for $17,641.12 for her trip from Thompson, Manitoba, to Ottawa, Quebec City, Montreal and back to Ottawa, including $13,619.90 in airfare and other transportation expenses, $2,508.39 in lodging and $1,512.83 in meals and other miscellaneous expenses, according to House of Commons records.
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The trip began on December 21, five days after the House of Commons went on Christmas recess, and continued into the new year. Ashton was accompanied on the trip by her partner, Bruce Moncur, and their two children.
CBC reported that social media posts show Moncur and her children enjoying Quebec City's winter attractions, including ice slides and snow tubing, while Ashton has also been seen skating with her children and visiting the city's German Christmas market.
However, a current scan of the MP's Instagram and X-Feed shows no posts from the period in question, suggesting they may have been deleted.
Citing House of Commons travel records, CBC reported that Ashton claimed he was going to Quebec City to “attend meetings with stakeholders related to the business of the House of Commons,” justifying his claim of charging taxpayers for the trip.
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An NDP spokesperson added that she was there “to discuss language priorities” in her role as the party's official languages ​​critic, and that she also “met with union officials.”
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In a media statement sent to CBC News, NDP communications director Alana Cahill called Ashton a “strong representative for the people of northern Manitoba” who “occasionally travels to other parts of the country to meet with experts and advocates about the infrastructure challenges facing rural northern communities, as well as for her own pundit work.”
She added: “House rules allow MPs to travel for parliamentary business. Niki followed all the rules and the House approved her travel expenses.”
But Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said the trip was “very bad and very suspicious.”
“If Mr. Ashton doesn't want Canadians to think that he charged taxpayers for a trip to Quebec on holiday, he'd better provide a very good explanation, a very specific explanation, of the value that taxpayers actually received from this trip,” he told CBC News.
A CTV News expense analysis last year found that lawmakers spent more than $14.6 million of taxpayer money on travel in the first half of 2023, an increase of about 10 per cent over the previous six months.
The report found that outside of party leaders, Ashton was the second-highest spender on travel after Bloc Quebecois MP Marieline Gilles, spending $131,527.53 in the six-month period.
The analysis also found that, broken down by political party, the NDP had the highest travel expenses per MP at about $60,000, $16,000 higher than the national average.
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