It would seem that the week away from the House of Commons, and that same week watching the mainstream media endlessly berate MPs for choosing to forbid a performance audit on their expenditures by Auditor General Shelia Murphy has led the political parties to find a compromise / cave-in completely in order to avoid the wrath of their constituents. This is coming hot on the heels of a similar audit on British MPs which revealed all sorts of expenditures that on their face seem illegitimate – cleaning moats? Really? – and another one on Nova Scotia’s MLAs which showed thousands of dollars being spent in ways that aren’t what we had in mind when we send our government taxes. I hope that the solution that is found pleases most parties and meets our expectations as well as the expectations set by MPs and the auditor general. I think though there is a moment of pause that is needed before we go too far… we need to be careful what we wish for.
Let’s perform a mental exercize. Let’s consider a world where the legislative body and the cabinet all have to report every dime they spend in excruciating detail, and that the spending must be done in in line with very strict and specific guidelines, guidelines that demand specific benefits be identified as a result of the spending.
At first in this fictional world there were a few scandals about politicians buying all manner of things, whether it was chewing gum disguised as entitlements, moat cleaning or reimbursed electricity bills that were never paid in the first place. The system corrected for these measures and soon the scandals moved to other, more petty things. The extra shot of espresso in a coffee. Lunches for parliamentary committees. The upgrade of RAM in a member’s computer. Then the scandals stopped altogether, ostensibly because members spent their money appropriately. Or, here’s the thing, they stopped spending it altogether. That doesn’t mean MPs stopped having extra shots of espresso. Just you stopped paying for it.
We should accept the idea that when you get a volunteer a free slurpee they are more likely to come out next week or when we buy a group lunch when we hear their great idea they are more likely to give the idea more freely. In that case those who have that ability must be more powerful than those who don’t. In addition, those who have sufficient resources to ignore the system of public compensation and reimbursement would do just that, like Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger does in California. The Governator already is sufficiently wealthy to go without a salary has governor so just doesn’t take a salary. Make no mistake, I have no desire to pay for an MP or MLA’s moat cleaning, but I do not want to create a system of governance where only the rich can afford to take office.
A good and more local example was the recent release of MLA’s mileage here in Alberta. Ranging from Battle River-Wainwright MLA Doug Griffiths who claimed 80,360 km to several MLAs including Lesser Slave Lake MLA Pearl Calahasen who claimed none. Now I don’t believe for a moment Ms. Calahasen didn’t drive a single kilometre in the course of her duties – Lesser Slave Lake is a GIANT constituency. She has chosen to not claim any kilometres. And she isn’t alone – 10 of our 83 MLAs didn’t claim a single kilometre of mileage, and many more chose to claim obviously small amounts that are far less than the kilometres traveled in the pursuit of their jobs. I strongly suspect many of these MLAs decided that it either wasn’t worth the bother – although you can bet for $0.46 a kilometre (or whatever it is) I’d happily fill out a form for $40,000 – but I would imagine the motivation was more related to the public nature of the disclosure. The bother doesn’t come from the form, but rather the scrutiny from the public and their political opponents. And obviously in the case of the 10 MLAs who didn’t submit a claim, they could afford to go without this reimbursement.
Our parliamentarians are paid quite well, as most articles over the past week have pointed out. Our MPs earn far above the national average, far above even higher middle class salaries, well above $100,000. I often find I am the lone defender of paying our politicians a fair, even generous wage for a very similar reason as above – in a world where politicians would be volunteers, then only people as rich as Schwarzenegger could run for office. I don’t like limiting our options at the ballot box to only the wealthy.
I’m not suggesting our politicians be given blank cheques to spend whatever they feel necessary to accomplish their jobs – nor am I suggesting that they be allowed to hide their expenses from the interested eyes of the public. I don’t have the perfect solution, but I am confident in saying this – the public has the right to know how their money is spent, but excessive scrutiny comes with its own problems.
I may have some hesitations on putting up the expenses of parliamentarians for us all to see – but so far no walls have crumbled in jurisdictions that post ministerial expenses. Extending such a move to all MPs would also go a long way to re-establishing trust with our electorate. It might be fair to establish a decent threshold of materiality – even the Auditor General said she wasn’t interested in $4 coffees – but looking like you have something to hide is no place a politician wants to sit. And I doubt there would be much there for us to get too excited over, as KPMG already audits parliamentary expenses so we at least can stand behind the accuracy of the numbers. However that isn’t what Ms. Murphy was interested in testing. A performance audit looks at similar things such as adherence to policies and what not but ultimately it looks at whether Parliament is meeting its goals for the coin spent.
I would suggest that we skip the middle person of the Auditor General and pass judgment ourselves. Naturally we need good, solid, accurate information to make our political judgment with, and audited financial statements are an important part of that. But whether or not Parliament has been spending my money appropriately, meeting their goals? I can make that judgment myself and will do so at the ballot box.
