NDP MP Niki Ashton billed taxpayers $17K for Christmas travel

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A New Democrat MP’s Christmastime travels with her family has cost Canadian taxpayers more than $17,000, the CBC has learned.

The broadcaster reports that Niki Ashton, the member of Parliament for Churchill-Keewatinook Aski in northern Manitoba, billed taxpayers a total of $17,641.12 — $13,619.90 for airfare and other transportation; $2,508.39 for accommodations; and $1,512.83 for meals and other incidentals, according to House of Commons records — for a trip from Thompson, Man., to Ottawa, then to Quebec City, then Montreal, and back to Ottawa before returning to Thompson.

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The trip lasted from Dec. 21 — five days after the House of Commons had risen for its Christmas break — until early in the new year. Ashton’s partner, Bruce Moncur, and their two children joined her on her travels.

The CBC reported that social media posts show Moncur and the children taking in some of Quebec City’s winter attractions, including an ice slide and snow tubing, and that Ashton is also seen in those posts skating with her children and visiting the city’s German Christmas Market.

However, a current scan of the MP’s Instagram and X feeds show no posts during the period in question, suggesting they may have been removed.

Ashton justified billing taxpayers for the trip by claiming she was going to Quebec City to “attend meetings with stakeholders about business of the House,” the CBC said, citing House of Commons travel records.

Since the pandemic, Ashton has worked remotely, and records show she was only in Ottawa on one occasion for four days during the fall 2022 sitting.

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An NDP spokesperson added that she was in Quebec “to discuss language priorities” in her role as the party’s critic for official languages, and that she also “met with a union person.”

In a statement sent to CBC News, Alana Cahill, the NDP’s director of communications, called Ashton “a strong representative for the people of northern Manitoba” who “sometimes travels to other parts of the country in order to meet with experts and advocates on the infrastructure challenges facing northern, rural communities and for work related to her critic portfolios.”

She added: “House of Commons rules allow members of Parliament to travel for parliamentary business. Niki followed all the rules and the House of Commons approved her travel expenses.”

However, Franco Terrazzano, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said the trip “looks really bad and it smells really fishy.”

“If Ashton doesn’t want Canadians to think that she billed taxpayers so she could take a vacation to Quebec over the holidays, then she better have a very good explanation, a very concrete explanation as to what value, if any, taxpayers actually got from this trip,” he told CBC News.

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Last year, an analysis of expenses by CTV News found that members of Parliament spent more than $14.6 million of taxpayers’ money on travel in the first half of 2023, a roughly 10 per cent increase over the previous six months.

It noted that, aside from party leaders, Ashton was the second-highest spender after Bloc Québécois MP Marilène Gill, racking up $131,527.53 in travel costs over six months.

The analysis also found that, by party, the NDP had the highest per-member travel costs at nearly $60,000, which was $16,000 above the national average.

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