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Mulcair given a language lesson to reporters: in the dictionary amendment and change is different. #hw — Rosemary Barton (@RosieBarton) May 14, 2014

The NDP leader stood by his claim that the arrangement was approved by House of Commons administration, despite documents that suggest administrators had no idea the staffers were working outside Ottawa.

“The NDP has respected the rules every single step of the way,” Mulcair said.

“We’ve been completely transparent with the House authorities … The NDP couldn’t have been more open about this.”

But documents provided by administrators to a Commons committee — which is scheduled to grill Mulcair on the matter on Thursday — suggest otherwise.

They show that administrators were dubious about the arrangement when the NDP set up its first satellite office in Montreal in the fall of 2011, ostensibly to help the raft of rookie New Democrat MPs elected in Quebec with their constituency work.

Since then, the NDP has set up other satellite offices in Quebec City and Toronto. It was in the process of setting up another in Saskatchewan, where it has no MPs, when the all-party board of internal economy, which oversees administration of the Commons, issued a new rule last month explicitly forbidding the use of parliamentary resources to pay staff working out of offices owned or leased by a party.

According to the documents, Commons officials met in October 2011 with Jess Turk-Browne, deputy chief of staff to then interim NDP leader Nycole Turmel.

“Two officials (from Finance Services and Human Resources Services) specifically asked where the employees were working since the Employment Forms indicated Ottawa and yet the residences of the employees were in the Montreal area,” says a summary of the matter sent to the committee by Commons clerk Audrey O’Brien.