The Board of Internal Economy: You will not believe this...

By GREG WESTON, QMI Agency

While ordinary Canadians are being forced to tighten their belts, federal MPs recently helped themselves to $5.1 million from the public purse — wait for it — for more political junk mail.

While they were at it, those elected to ensure the prudent expenditure of tax dollars stuffed another $2.7 million into their own travel budgets, and gave all their staff a raise.

Of course, no hogfest on the Hill would be complete without the Members of Porkville pigging out on another $3.2 million to fatten their already overbloated pensions.

If all this sounds like the makings of a taxpayer revolt, it darn well should be.

But don’t ask what the heck the politicians are thinking.

In the amazing republic of Canuckistan, the nation’s elected parliamentarians are still allowed to raid the treasury for their own creature comforts without any effective public scrutiny or transparency.

Instead, a small group of MPs from all four political parties periodically gathers in private with the Commons speaker to decide how to help themselves and fellow parliamentarians at taxpayers’ expense, all without a single word of public debate or justification.

They call themselves the Board of Internal Economy — not to be confused with doing anything the least bit economically — and are likely the deepest black hole of unaccountability in all of government.

Last fall, this secret society of MPs approved a 3.2% increase in this year’s Commons budget that will suck a whopping $440 million from taxpayers’ pockets.

Yet, the board’s meetings are always held behind closed doors, its books are off-limits to the auditor general, and its filing cabinets cannot be pried open by reporters requesting documents under the access to information laws that are supposed to ensure the public knows how its money is being wasted, er, spent.

For instance, two weeks after the board approved $5.1 million more for junk mail, the opposition parties voted to limit the program, but don’t ask what happens to the money.

We asked Liberal MP Marcel Proulx, the unlucky spokesman for the board, how any group of elected representatives could possibly justify locking the public out of deliberations involving taxpayers’ money.

“Oh, well, it’s always been like that, and there’s no intention of opening it.”

Proulx pointed out the board does make its decisions public, albeit in vague meeting minutes released months after the fact.

The latest, for instance, reveals the board will consider at its next closed meeting “a service provided by Service Canada for the exclusive use of parliamentarians.”

Proulx admits that even as the board’s spokesman, he is “not allowed to discuss what the discussions were, but we can give out the results of these discussions.”

As a consequence of that policy, the minutes of virtually every meeting include some reference to a “settlement” approved for an unspecified ex-staffer of an unnamed MP.

How much taxpayers are coughing up, and for what, the board of internal secrecy will not say.

Is the pay-out for severance? Or hush-money to cover up the egregious misbehaviour of an MP? Taxpayers — and voters — apparently have no business knowing.

MPs having anointed themselves to be their own watchdog, it is hardly surprising that individual parliamentarians are allowed to operate — and spend — behind the same wall of accountability opaqueness.

Every year, MPs have to make public the total amounts of their travel and office expenses.

But they are not required to give a detailed breakdown of those expenses, much less produce copies of actual receipts.

One might have thought this archaic honours system would have gone out the window after the massive scandal in Britain, where auditors uncovered MPs stiffing taxpayers for everything from moats to mistresses.

Instead, the U.K. fiasco merely sparked a muted debate in this country’s parliament about maybe allowing Auditor General Sheila Fraser to audit the expenses of MPs.

So far, even that modest concept of accountability has been met by all-party horror.

To their credit, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives changed the rules to expose ministerial expense accounts to full public scrutiny.

As the PM said: “Canadians have a right to know exactly how their tax dollars are spent.”

What is it about that statement MPs don’t understand?

rosencrentz wrote:We elect public officials and should have enough confidence in the systm of cheques and balances, plus the Freedom of Information Act, and the fact that public servants are encouraged to act as tattletales, when they uncover illegal activities.
Our system works just fine, although a bit slow.
Steven Harper has been great in everything except being open, and transparent .
Any queston of wrong doing and he calls in the RCMP, and their tazer machines.
Regarding paperwork for small bureaucrats, as a small business I have never had the problem of writing on many required forms to be filled out, "no one here to pay to fill in, please send someone"- and the requests seem to disappear.

OTTAWA — Justice Minister Rob Nicholson and Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff both seem to agree: There is no need to make MPs’ expenses public.

In separate interviews on Sunday both politicians were asked whether the $500-million budget for the House of Commons and the Senate, that includes MPs’ and senators’ expenses, should be reviewed by the auditor general.

The Board of Internal Economy, presided over by MPs from all parties, currently manages that budget and its annual audit does not reveal details of how MPs spend taxpayers’ money.

“Our expenses are publicly available already in aggregate form,” Ignatieff said. “We already have an independent audit and the only question is whether that audit is made public and that is a matter for the Board of Internal Economy.”

Nicholson said making expenses public was not “his call.”

“I accept what I am told by representatives by all political parties at the Board of Internal Economy that there are safeguards in place to protect Canadians’ money,” he said

peter.zimonjic@sunmedia.ca

OTTAWA – A Tory cabinet minister says despite the furor over MPs refusing to let the auditor general look at their expenses, he hasn't heard anything from his constituents on the subject.

“I represent about 120,000 people in the House of Commons. I haven't had one constituent contact me on it,” said James Moore, the Canadian Heritage minister who represents the Vancouver-area Port Moody—Westwood—Port Coquitlam riding.

“Because the media are talking a lot about it doesn't mean the public is talking a lot about it,” Moore told CTV’s Question Period on Sunday.

Auditor General Sheila Fraser asked for an invitation to do a performance audit on MPs' expenses and House of Commons operations.

The expenses are already subject to an accounting audit to ensure proper accounting principals are upheld, but the audit doesn't evaluate whether spending is effective.

The Board of Internal Economy, a committee of MPs from all parties whose discussions are secret, refused Fraser's request.

The decision sparked a public backlash has been so strong all parties have stepped back from their initial support of that decision and now say they want the committee to sit down with Fraser to work out a compromise.

A recent poll for QMI Agency found 88% of people surveyed want more openness on MP expenses.

laura.payton@sunmedia.ca

OTTAWA -- Manitoba MPs are open to being more open with how they're spending your money.

But how transparent they're willing to be depends on who you ask and what others are willing to do. And in the case of eight of the nine Manitoba Tories, they weren't even prepared to answer the Free Press' questions on the increasingly hot political issue.

The comments come amid the whirlwind of debate and public outcry about the secrecy of how MPs spend money to run their offices and carry out their duties.

On May 13 the all-party committee that administers the House of Commons budget shunned auditor general Sheila Fraser's request to look at the MP expense claims. The system is already full of enough checks and balances and Fraser had no authority to audit MPs, the committee said.

Canadians responded in anger and disbelief and last week, one by one, each political party changed its mind.

The issue will be discussed this morning as all the parties meet for their weekly caucuses, and a meeting between Fraser and the Board of Internal Economy is being planned to hash out a deal for her to conduct an audit.

Manitoba Liberal MP Anita Neville said she knows Canadians are suspicious and said she feels confident to open up her books.

"I have no problem with further disclosure," she said. "I think Canadians deserve to know where the money is going."

In fact, said Neville, she asked her office last week to prepare a more detailed summary of the $444,916 she expensed in 2008-09. That report isn't finished yet, she said.

But Neville said there is a fear that an audit will be value-for-money, and that there are often good explanations for an expense that on the surface may seem high or unreasonable.

"It's not as straightforward as it would seem," said Neville.

Fraser said Tuesday she had no intention of poring over every penny spent by Canada's 308 MPs had she been permitted to scrutinize House of Commons operations.

Fraser said she was surprised by the public backlash to a decision by the secretive all-party committee of MPs to reject her bid to do a "performance" audit. But she also said that because of the flap, federal auditors would "probably do more extensive testing than we might have done otherwise" if the board changes its mind and allows the audit.

Fraser spoke publicly Tuesday for the first time since May 13 to clarify what she proposed for the audit.

"It was never suggested that it would be an audit of MPs or MPs' expenses," she said, "and certainly never, never an audit or any kind of assessment of MPs' performance."

Instead, she said, it would have been a performance audit of the administration of the House of Commons in such areas as contracting, human resource management, management of information technology and security.

The audit would entail spot checks to ensure the systems are working as advertised, Fraser said, and that probably would lead to a review of MPs' expenses. "But it would not have been a detailed audit and review of all MP expenses," she said.

Neville said it's clear Canadians want more information about how their MPs spend money and they should get it.

The Free Press asked the 13 MPs currently representing Manitoba to answer three questions about the situation, including whether they support the decision to deny Fraser the audit, whether they think more details should be provided to the public about how MPs are spending money, and whether they'd be willing to provide further details of their expense claims from the last two years.

All three NDP MPs, the lone Liberal and one Conservative either responded to the survey or granted an interview. Eight of the nine Conservatives did not respond at all.

In total, Manitoba MPs claimed $6,348,792 in 2008-09 but the amounts claimed by each MP under each category varied significantly, and there is no explanation, beyond total amounts, about where the money went and why.

NDP MP Pat Martin said Tuesday he remains undecided about whether the public should get more information about MP expense claims and said he would open up his books "when all other MPs do the same."

But he also thinks turning Fraser away was the "dumbest move in the history of Canadian politics."

Winnipeg South MP Rod Bruinooge, the only Conservative from Manitoba who answered any questions from the Free Press about the expense issue, said he's not opposed to being more open about what MPs spend money on.

"I have no difficulty with that," said Bruinooge.

But he says Canadians will certainly find there is nothing to be suspicious about. "I'd be highly surprised if someone was hiding a castle or a moat cleaning (on their expense claims) in Canada," he said.

Manitoba NDP MP Jim Maloway concurred. "There is no money being handed out without receipts," he said.

-- with files from Canwest News Service

mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition May 26, 2010 A4