Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. Our view is that MPs should not be policed or supervised in the way they allocate their budgets. What may work for Mr. Richards in a humongous rural riding in Alberta might not work for you in Mississauga. And if Mr. Goodale wants to ride in the front of the plane or what ha

Procedure and House Affairs committee  We'd counsel against the creation of a separate auditing function for the House of Commons. We think the Auditor General can do a good enough job. We also favour total proactive disclosure on financial transactions and letting your constituents be the auditors. We take kind of a

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Two examples are Toronto and Alberta. Citizens can use the Internet to find information on any member of Toronto's municipal council or any member of the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and look at the elected members' expenses. Technology these days makes it fairly easy to put r

Procedure and House Affairs committee  On behalf of the Taxpayers Federation, we salute you for your principled stance on the gun registry, and we regret that you were not able to stay in your political party and represent your constituents. That is a travesty. Sorry, but I had to sneak that in.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  In this day and age, you can slap a document on a scanner, upload it to the Internet in no time, and your constituents can have a look at your expenses. A couple of senators and a couple of MPs are doing it. It's very beneficial. I can expand on a couple of these real-life exampl

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Only the financial information. I don't think—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. We think that each ticket.... If you buy books of tickets or whatever.... It's just so your constituents can figure out whether your flights are being booked in a responsible way and whether the individual flights are....

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Clearly, the protection given to public servants is not enough. That was really obvious in the case of Allan Cutler, who was the first whistleblower within the Department of Public Works and Government Services. At the start of the scandal, Mr. Cutler revealed all the activities

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. We believe the current practice in Alberta is the gold standard in Canada at this point.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. We're saying that there's a former—

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes. I think Mr. Trudeau's motion to institute proactive disclosure along the same model as was introduced by the previous Liberal government for ministers was a positive and necessary reform. We would have liked to have seen that motion adopted. It seemed like a no-brainer to us

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. We thank the committee for inviting us, and we're grateful to the House of Commons for undertaking this very worthy initiative. We appreciate the initiative of the official opposition for moving this comprehensive motion and the initiative of the Liberal Pa

Information & Ethics committee  We believe that journalistic sources should be protected. We've had some discussions with Mr. Rathgeber about it, and we believe he's reflected and investigated the issue carefully. But I think it behooves the committee to get expert advice and satisfy themselves that, whatever a

Information & Ethics committee  Yes.

Information & Ethics committee  We'll be very critical of this bill if it comes out with that. You're talking about people earning a considerable amount, and there will be fewer than 2,000 out of 212,000 in the core public service.