Pallister lashes out after NDP re-hires chief of staff

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This article was published 25/10/2017 (2961 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An angry Premier Brian Pallister says Manitobans should be unhappy and asking lots of questions after Liam Martin has again become the NDP leader’s chief of staff — less than three years since taxpayers covered his $146,047 severance when he left the same job with the Greg Selinger government.

Martin became NDP Leader Wab Kinew’s chief of staff last week, leaving a senior position with the Manitoba Teachers’ Society (MTS). He will be paid $92,920 a year.

Pallister accused the NDP of running a slush fund for their staffers with public money.

Now that Martin has returned to the same job less than two years after getting severance, Pallister said in an interview on Wednesday afternoon, “I’d like to see the NDP repay the money he was paid (as severance).

“I’m a dreamer — it won’t be repaid,” Pallister said.

Pallister faced off against Kinew in the premier’s estimates hearings on Wednesday.

“He was paid $146,000 to leave, to not work,” Pallister said. “He’s back. This is the type of thing that troubles taxpayers. This is not a practice we should be respecting. They come back and cash in again a second time.

“It does us all discredit,” Pallister said. “This is a very great way for people to make double salaries — it’s not fair, it’s not right.”

The premier predicted that former NDP staffers who were paid severance of more than $700,000 two years ago, then later moved to work for the NDP government in Alberta, will soon be back to work here after the New Democrats get defeated in Alberta. “They’ll be shipped back here, and we’ll pay them again.”

The premier challenged Kinew to disclose all the money Martin has been paid in salary and severance, and what he’ll be getting. “I wonder if Mr. Martin got severance from MTS too,” he said.

Kinew wouldn’t answer the premier’s challenge. Kinew said he has no knowledge of what happens at MTS, which he called a private organization, said that severance is normal practice, and pointed out that Pallister had received compensation after leaving office previously as an MLA and as an MP.

After leaving the hearing, Kinew agreed to provide Martin’s salary to the Free Press.

The NDP would not say if Martin took a pay cut after leaving a senior job with the Manitoba Teachers’ Society.

But Kinew’s press secretary Rorie Mcleod Arnould said that MTS did not pay Martin any severance. “Liam resigned — it was a clean break,” he said.

Martin had been the chief of staff with former NDP premier Greg Selinger for more than two years until he left on Nov. 13, 2014. He was paid $146,047 in severance.

On Wednesday, the teachers’ union would not say when it had hired Martin, when he left, what his job title had been or his salary.

Web references said Martin had been the public affairs facilitator with MTS.

The issue had flared in estimates as Kinew repeatedly pressed Pallister about the activities of treasury board secretary, Paul Beauregard, who was appointed in July after working as a senior executive with Manitoba Telecom Services.

Pallister repeatedly insisted in response to Kinew’s digging that Beauregard has recused himself while dealing with anything that could be considered a conflict with his former job.

Kinew also demanded to know how often Pallister recuses himself from cabinet discussion affecting his own insurance business.

“Not to this point,” Pallister said. “I plead guilty to starting a small business.”

Pallister said two-thirds of his caucus have businesses, something of which New Democrat MLAs have no experience.

He took numerous shots at Kinew — first elected last year — for Selinger’s having hired expensive short-term staff to work in the premier’s office the same time as the former premier campaigned for a challenge to his leadership, after five caucus members openly rebelled against him.

nick.martin@freepress.mb.ca