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There was an April, 2012 potluck by the island’s NDP club that touted the attendance of “Salt Spring’s ‘other’ Member of Parliament, Pat Martin.”

A year later, another dinner featured “an Ottawa update from Salt Spring’s unofficial MP, Pat Martin.”

“This visit occurred during what Global News described as ‘an extended sabbatical’ during summer on Salt Spring Island, where Mr. Martin does not live,” wrote Ouellette’s press release.

The release also noted that Martin expensed a total of $360 at a Vancouver and Powell River restaurant in July of 2014.

“Both restaurants are in the province of British Columbia, as is Salt Spring Island, where Pat Martin does not live,” it read.

Martin, the NDP repsentative for Winnipeg Centre since 1997, has owned part of a hobby farm on Salt Spring Island since 2001, but says he only goes there at Christmas and on summer holidays.

“Only failed Liberal candidates have ever tried to suggest I live in BC. Except some of them are too stupid to even get their lies straight. One idiot liberal told a constituent that I lived in the Queen Charlotte Islands!!!” Martin wrote in an email to the Winnipeg Sun in 2007.

Nevertheless, the rumour that Martin doesn’t live in Winnipeg has persisted, including in 2011 when it was mentioned in a anonymous flyer circulated to constituents.

This time around, Martin said he intended to send cease-and-desist orders to anyone caught spreading the rumour.

“They’re going to get their asses sued … I know a thing or two about libel,” Martin told the Winnipeg Free Press in March.