Parliament of Canada – time for online reporting of expenses?
Senator Mike Duffy. Photo: Handout.
If the recent Senate expense scandals have taught Canadians anything, it’s that Parliament of Canada officials will take advantage of the rules to pad their pockets if they can.
Senator Mike Duffy has become the poster boy for Parliament of Canada abuse of expense guidelines but he’s hardly alone. Like Mike Duffy, former Conservative senators Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau are now sitting in disgrace as independents.
Will more senators join them before this mess is properly sorted?
And what about the misguided tweet from newbie Calgary Centre MP Joan Crockatt? Anyone who follows the former Calgary Herald editor, as I do, is familiar with Crockateer’s tenuous grasp of facts and logic. Like this whopper from Monday, in which she forgets there are three former Tory senators, not two, and bizarrely tries to spin the scandal enveloping the Red Chamber: ”Our govt has the highest ethical standards demonstrated by 3 resignations: 2 from Senate caucus & the PM chief of staff.”
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Crockatt’s now infamous tweet has inspired columns by national political pundits, outrage on social media networks, and plenty of head shaking by ordinary Canadians. What it hasn’t inspired is any indication from the Harper Government that substantive reform of the Senate’s free spending ways is on the horizon.
Vacuums have a way of being filled, which is why I wasn’t surprised to find a release from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation in today’s inbox. Director Gregory Thomas is calling on Prime Minister Stephen Harper to introduce an Accountability Act 2.0, “to put an end to expense fraud by Senators and restore the confidence of Canadians in Parliament.”
The CTF proposal has five parts:
- Mandatory online reporting of office, travel, and hospitality expenses for all MPs and Senators (including receipts),
- Annual random audits of MPs and Senators by the auditor general
- Applying the Access to Information Act to MPs and Senators
- Scrapping pension entitlements for those convicted of stealing from taxpayers
- Ability to recall parliamentarians
“When the Conservatives were elected in 2006 they brought in the first Accountability Act in response to the sponsorship scandal, now it’s time for the Accountability Act 2.0 to clean up the senate expense scandal,” said Thomas, who points out that as of this past fall Alberta requires all elected officials, political staff and senior bureaucrats to post expenses and receipts online.
Beacon reporter Christopher Walsh wrote in a February news story that Alison Redford’s government brought in the new rules partly because of lavish spending on the part of Alberta Health Services, which was using public money to buy Calgary Flames tickets, for instance.
Government, it seems, has become big business, but without the spending controls that usually accompany successul private enterprises. Thomas and the CTF say it’s time for the Canadian government to emulate the Prime Minister’s home province.
“Had these rules been in place for the Parliament of Canada two years ago, Senator Duffy’s receipts would have shown that he wasn’t spending much time in PEI while claiming a housing allowance,” said Thomas.
Thomas says Senators and MPs convicted of filing fraudulent expense claims should lose their generous pension entitlements, much like the law recently passed in Nova Scotia by the NDP government.
“There needs to be a cost associated with ripping off taxpayers,” said Thomas. “Otherwise this is never going to stop.”
Indeed.
And given the precedent of at least one province requiring online reporting of expenses, which demonstrates that it can be done without a lot of muss and fuss, the Canadian government should implement this program immediately for all Members of Parliament, senators, and deputy ministers.
Prime Minister Harper says he’s a fiscal conservative, let him behave like one.
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