The Commons governing board has approved a new expense disclosure system a senior Liberal on the board says would have detected NDP spending on a satellite office network before it exploded in a raging controversy prior to the 2015 election.

The new disclosure regime will require proactive disclosure of all expenditures by the research bureau of each recognized party in the Commons and will cost Parliament $2 million yearly in additional new staff and information technology, according to minutes of the Board of Internal Economy tabled last week.

NDP expenditures from its Commons research bureau to support a satellite office in Montreal following its sweep of 59 Commons seats in the 2011 federal election, along with expenditures from office budgets for its new Quebec MPs, led to an unprecedented confrontation between the NDP and the powerful board as details leaked out in 2014.

The confrontation climaxed publicly in February and March, 2015, after the board had ruled 68 New Democrat MPs, including party leader Tom Mulcair, had to reimburse $2.75 million in salaries for aides who had worked in satellite offices, most centred in Montreal.

A Federal Court case the NDP launched to challenge the board’s decision, and a separate board ruling NDP MPs had also wrongly used $1.17 million worth of free parliamentary mailing privileges, has been slowly simmering since 2015.

A Federal Court judge in Montreal last week gave the NDP its first victory in the case, dismissing board claims its internal proceedings were protected by Parliamentary privilege and that it was immune from outside interference by court actions.

Fisheries Minister Dominic LeBlanc, Liberal House Leader and one of his party’s MPs on the board during the satellite office battle, said Monday the decision to disclose caucus research office expenditures will increase governance over several million dollars in House spending that previously had been a confidence of each party’s caucus.

“They (the NDP) had a scheme whereby they had Parliamentary staff co-located at a partisan office in a city that was two hours of drive from Parliament Hill,” said LeBlanc, still on the board and one of two designated board spokespersons, one from the governing party and one from the official opposition.

“We thought, and still believe, we the Liberals, that was an inappropriate use of taxpayers’ money, and frankly the greater transparency on the expenditure of research funds might have caught that before it went on for a year or two,” LeBlanc said.

Although government legislation that became law last June now allows the board to hold meetings in public – with the first public session last week – it will continue to meet in camera to consider security issues, employee affairs and other confidential decisions such as legal settlements.

The $2 million in extended expense-disclosure bureaucracy and related systems will also go toward new quarterly disclosures the board approved for the budgets of House officers – from the Speaker down to party whips, and the office budget for any former prime minister who is still sitting in the Commons as an MP.

“Some of these research budgets are in the millions of dollars; it’s a formula according to the number of seats you win, and those are millions of taxpayer dollars and there should be a greater transparency around those expenditures,” LeBlanc said in an interview.

He defended the sizeable bump-up in the House of Commons $476-million budget.

“I can imagine the howls of outrage coming from you if we were two weeks late on disclosure or if we got something wrong,” LeBlanc said.

“We wanted to ensure that the House administration had the tools to do it properly and consistently; and that’s what they said was required, so we accepted their recommendation.”

The government came under fire this fall when, instead of fulfilling an election promise to expand the Access to Information Act to include offices of cabinet ministers and offices that provide administrative support for Parliament, it amended the law only to require the Commons and Senate Speakers to post more inclusive proactive expense disclosures for MPs and Senators, and to add expense disclosures for senior parliamentary bureaucrats.