MP expense disclosure promise no 'brave new world': Greg Weston

Canadians might be excused for imagining that months of national outrage over the Senate expenses scandal would have convinced the countrys elected MPs to fling open their kimonos and expose their own secretive spending to full public scrutiny.

Instead, the federal politicians are apparently hoping to show just enough to appease taxpayers without exposing any potentially embarrassing bits.

At issue is the roughly $450 million a year it costs taxpayers to keep federal MPs in everything from pencils to paycheques.

For decades, the politicians have brazenly excluded themselves from increasedtransparency even as they were imposing it on public servants and the rest of government.

Even now, after all that has gone on in the Senate, MPs continue to make up their own expense account rules, their daily creature comforts allocated by a committee of themselves, meeting entirely behind closed doors.

In short, MPs have been living in the same kind of fiscal wonderland that spawned the Senate expenses scandal, and which has been criticized by all manner of watchdogs from the auditor general to the information commissioner to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

As public opinion against the Senate has turned from bad to ugly, all three parties in the Commons are now promising to get their own house in order, in part by posting online all of their travel and hospitality expenses starting in April next year.

(The Liberals are already posting monthly totals of their expenses, and the Conservatives are pledging to follow suit by the end of this month.)

Are MPs finally going to practise what they preach about accountability to taxpayers?

Well, not exactly.

Don't bother looking for receipts

While the Commons is about to take several leaps in the right direction, it is not entering some brave new world of full disclosure. Far from it.

Most MPs expenses are already posted online, but in a bulk format that defies any kind of meaningful public scrutiny.

Civil servants have to account for every dime they charge to the treasury with proper documentation including receipts, all of which are available to the public under the Access to Information Act.

• MPs spend over $123.6M in office and other expenses
• MP expense reporting to be changed next spring

But not MPs and cabinet ministers they have used a legal loophole to conveniently exempt their expenses from release under the Access to Information Act.

The same will apply to the changes all three parties are making the expenses they will be posting online are totals for travel and hospitality.

And without a detailed breakdown of those totals, theres no way Canadians can know whether their money is being spent wisely or, say, on a $16 glass of orange juice.

Among all parliamentarians, some federal cabinet ministers have been the worst offenders in the Commons game of hide-the-money.

For over a decade, they have been racking up millions of dollars in travel and other expenses dutifully posted online, knowing the public can never get at the details of their spending.

Former Liberal cabinet minister Sheila Copps, for one, famously ran up over $1 million in travel without having to account publicly for a single receipt.

Generous allowances

All MPs have a lot of money to spend, a lot of discretion about how to spend it, and not enough public accountability.

For instance, like senators, MPs who live outside the capital region get an allowance of up to $28,000 a year to pay for housing in Ottawa, including all utilities, phone, cable and parking, plus meals at a flat rate of just over $90 a day, no receipts required.

Even MPs with ridings in the Ottawa region are entitled to claim $48 a day for breakfast and dinner when the Commons is sitting, plus mileage (at about 54 cents a kilometre) to drive to and from Parliament Hill and their homes each day.

All MPs using their cars to get around their respective ridings are entitled to the mileage reimbursement no proof of actual use required.

Every MP gets up to 64 free round-trip flights a year, mainly to fly between Ottawa and the home riding, regardless of cost. Up to 25 of those freebies can be used to go anywhere in Canada, and include four flights to and from Washington and New York no public explanations required.

Spouses, kids and designated others can share some of the free flights. No questions.

Finally, MPs are allowed up to about $10,000 in hospitality for such things as taking guests to dinner, gifts for constituents, and flowers for the deceased.

Of course, just as parliamentarians have the collective power to keep the public out of their expense accounts, so they have the authority to open their spending to full and meaningful scrutiny.

Until that happens, Parliaments promised kimono reveal is mostly an enticing bit of leg and a bums rush.