NDP to ask RCMP to investigate G8 spending in MP’s riding

The NDP says it will send a file of G8 documents to the Mounties for possible investigation.

They will also ask the House of Commons ethics committee to look into money spent in Huntsville, Ont., on projects linked to the international summit in 2010.

They say the committee should hear from officials, local mayors and Tony Clement, whose riding benefited from G8 infrastructure projects.

The New Democrats have obtained a file of documents, including emails between Clement, now head of the Treasury Board, and Huntsville Mayor Claude Doughty.

NNDP critic Charlie Angus says the emails are disturbing and suggest that Clement was using G8 money as a personal slush fund.

He says it seems Clement sidestepped bureaucratic controls and the whole matter needs investigation.

He said at a news conference he doesn’t know if any laws were broken.

“We think that what they have done is broken all the internal rules,” he said.

Angus said it’s wrong that Clement, who was Health minister during the summit, has now been moved to Treasury Board, where he holds the government purse strings.

“Mr. Clement still hasn’t come clean with the Canadian public.”

Angus pointed to a $21-million hockey rink and swimming pool which was billed as a media centre for the summit, but was never used as such.

He said Clement’s emails suggest that the Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s office was angry with the Ontario Provincial Police, which scorned the use of the rink as a media centre.

“It appears to us that the prime minister must have known very clearly what was going on,” he said.

Angus said there are too many unanswered questions about G8 spending.

He said it looks as if there is “a black hole of accountability at the centre of the Harper government.”