The New Democratic Party is coping with a campaign setback after learning that a deal surrounding about $45,000 in donations from several construction unions violated the Nova Scotia Elections Act.
Revelations about the questionable donations came just as a poll commissioned by the CBC was released Monday that suggested the NDP could form the next government on election night, June 9, defeating the ruling Progressive Conservatives.
NDP Leader Darrell Dexter said his campaign learned about the situation over the weekend and returned the money to the local unions Monday morning.
“Party officials absolutely did the right thing,” Dexter told CBC News. “That’s what anybody would have expected from any political party in the province.”
In April, nine construction union locals belonging to the Mainland Nova Scotia Building and Construction Trades Council each gave the New Democrats a $5,000 donation — the maximum under law.
However, it was later learned that the Trades Council organized the donation and had promised to reimburse each local union for its donation from a pool of funds the council keeps for donations.
Trades Council would reimburse locals
“The affiliates of the council decided to make donations and then there was some discussion around the building trades reimbursing the contributions made from the money that each local union put into the council,” Cordell Cole, president of the council, told CBC News.
Cole said the council’s lawyer had told him the arrangement was allowed under the Nova Scotia Elections Act.
However, Elections Nova Scotia said the council’s arrangement breached the Elections Act. It added that the NDP did the right thing by returning the money.
Cole confirmed that only the locals that attended the meeting supported the motion to donate to the NDP. There were several locals that didn’t attend the meeting when the decision was made.
One local union confirmed to a CBC News reporter that it objected to the scheme and refused to participate.
The two other parties campaigning in the coming election criticized the NDP for accepting the money in the first place.
“It’s awful strange, though, that when the microscope went on them and the relationship with the unions, all of a sudden, they decided they better start handing money back,” Liberal Leader Stephen McNeil said. “What else is there that we don’t know about?”
Jordi Morgan, PC party spokesman, said the RCMP should be called in to investigate.
“Any amount of money that has been obtained illegally, there could be some criminal implications,” Morgan said. “We feel that the RCMP are the people to determine that.”
