Yellowknife (Nov 06/06) - In August of last year, Tu Nedhe MLA Bobby Villeneuve was vacationing with his kids in Alberta when he began charging hotels to his government credit card.

Tu Nedhe MLA Bobby Villeneuve took several trips during the last year, including one vacation to Jasper, Alta. that he partially financed with his government credit card. - NNSL file photo

Receipts from the territorial government read like a tour of the province's nicer resorts: $187 at Jasper's Sunwapta Fall Resort, $220 at the Pocahontas Bungalows, $218 at the Tonquin Inn and $193 at the Ramada in Whitecourt.

Overall, he doled out just over $1,100 tax dollars from Aug. 10 to 23 in what he later admitted was a family vacation. While Villeneuve repaid the government, the spending raised the hackles of social advocates and watchdog groups, and caused consternation among fellow politicians.

"Absolutely not," said Northwest Territories Premier Joe Handley when asked whether politicians should be taking vacations on the public purse. "MLAs are generally told what they can and cannot spend their money on."

Some of the details of Villeneuve's trip are revealed in hundreds of pages of recently released government documents. Those papers outline what critics have called a disturbing trend among some territorial leaders - spending that includes thousands of dollars for post-it notes, pens, mugs and other gadgets.

When News/North spoke with Villeneuve about the Alberta trip he conceded: "I got into a little hot water over that."

Villenueve, who represents communities on the eastern shore of Great Slave Lake, travelled to Alberta in early August on government business.

He then took his kids to the Rocky Mountain resort town of Jasper. (The 43-year-old first time MLA is the single father of two young children).

During the vacation, he said his personal credit card stopped working, forcing him to use his government account or face the prospect of cancelling the trip. "I just had to use it," he said.

Villeneuve said his personal card wasn't maxed out - instead it had probably become "wet". (A customer service representative with a major credit card company told News/North moisture does not normally affect a card's magnetic strip.)

"It was an isolated incident," said Villeneuve, who was asked by government bureaucrats to repay the money. "They said: 'You can't do that'... and I wrote a cheque."

In fact, financial records show he repaid the money in three separate installments, dated Nov. 10, Dec. 8 and Dec. 12 - the last coming a full four months after the vacation.

The top-ranking bureaucrat in the legislative assembly, clerk Tim Mercer, said officials asked Villeneuve to repay the money after they noticed the charges on his account. Mercer said Villeneuve did not mention that his credit card had become moist.

The co-chair of Alternatives North, a Yellowknife-based social advocacy group, said with shortfalls in social services across the territories, public money should not be going towards vacations. Leaders should instead pump more cash into daycare, housing and social assistance, said Suzette Montreuil."We would support the judicious use of public funds," she said last week.

Villeneuve also spent $2,031 on a September, 2005 trip to the Mathias Colomb Cree Nation in northern Manitoba, a small aboriginal town about 820-kilometres north of Winnipeg. Villeneuve said he was there for the funeral of a local cree elder.

"I got an invitation," Villeneuve said when asked why he attended the wake of a non-constituent.

Villeneuve said the trip served as a fact finding mission; he discussed issues like self-government and aboriginal treaty rights with leaders of the reserve.

Those issues were especially important for the people in his riding who are looking to settle their own land claim, he said.

But the then chief of the Mathias Colomb nation, Pascal Bighetty, told News/North he does not remember meeting with Villeneuve, though the name "rings a bell".

During the funeral, which happened in late September, Bighetty said he did not have political meetings with mourners; instead the community concentrated on putting to rest respected elder Peter Sinclair.

When asked whether it was possible he forgot about the encounter - which would have happened more than 12 months ago - he said "yes."

Villeneuve later said the discussions were informal and involved him "popping" into the band office. He did not have an agenda or meeting notes from the talks.

The trip included a stopover in Winnipeg, where Villeneuve spent a night in a hotel and rented a sport utility vehicle. He later repaid the government for the truck rental.

Government officials don't usually require a detailed justification of MLA spending on trips unless some expenses seem far out of line, said Mercer, assembly clerk. "Generally we take the word of the member," he said.

Villeneuve is not alone in using his constituency funds for travel. Yellowknife Centre MLA Robert Hawkins was hammered for spending thousands attending Expo 2005 in Aichi, Japan.

Critics questioned wether the trip - which cost just over $6,000, according to legislative records - was worth it. Hawkins said the sojourn helped raise Yellowknife's profile in Japan, a country whose people spent $16 million in the NWT in 2004.

Nahendeh MLA Kevin Menicoche also attended the fair, though most of the trip was subsidized by the territorial government's tourism department. At least $2,392 in charges appeared on Menicoche's account. In the weeks after news reports about the trip surfaced, MLAs banned international travel from their constituency budgets.

The same year, taxpayers paid at least $10,800 to send Speaker of the House Paul Delorey and Yellowknife MLA Bill Braden to the south pacific island of Fiji for several days of networking, according to news reports.

While travelling and business dinners are an important part of government business, the national research director for the Canadian Taxpayer's Federation said leaders must ensure they spend wisely.

"Politicians should have to answer... to the public," said Adam Taylor. "Politicians need to ask: 'Would it kill us to spend a little more frugally'?"

If not, the backlash could be severe, he suggested. "People should not underestimate the volatility of the electorate.".

See next Monday's edition of News/North for "Working dinner", the final installment in our three-part series on how territorial politicians spend your tax dollars.