Procedure and House Affairs Committee on May 28th, 2015

[Mark G. Watters, Chief Financial Officer, House of Commons]

These are actually spending estimates, so they represent expenditures of funds against a budget. The issue of a recovery would be a receivable. That would be a balance sheet item, not an expense statement item. They would not include that because of the simple fact that we're talking about net new expenditures.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Right.

Could you provide the committee an update on the recovery of the $2.7 million from the NDP members?

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

On a point of order—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Scott.

[Craig Scott, NDP, Toronto—Danforth, ON]

—this is quite obvious. Mr. Watters himself has said why this question is completely out of order. This has nothing to do with the estimates and I would ask you to please rule it out of order.

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

I will allow us to carry on. We've been fairly flexible whenever we're looking at estimates, and certainly even with the Chief Electoral Officer we got off into talking about whether it was election maps or other things.

Keep it within bounds, Mr. Lamoureux, if you can, please. Keep it to spending, if you can. I'll be a little more flexible, but not too much.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

I appreciate the latitude, Mr. Chairperson.

In regard to the expenditures, in order to achieve expenditures, we have a balance. There are often moneys being spent in budgets that you have to attempt to recover at times, so when a member does inappropriately spend money out of their MOB, there is a process to collect it. It's bylaw number 20. I can read it for all committee members. It states:

If a Member is 90 days or more in arrears in an amount owed to the House of Commons, the Chief Financial Officer may deduct the amount in arrears from any amount to be paid by the House of Commons to the Member, except a payment under section 55.1, 62.1, 62.2, or 62.3 of the Parliament of Canada Act.

Can you confirm that at the end of the 90 days the House administration will take the actions described by bylaw number 20 to recover these funds? Also, can you confirm whether or not it is in your discretion to withhold severance or pension contributions?

[Mark G. Watters]

Mr. Chair, that matter is before the Board of Internal Economy right now, so the board is dealing with that matter.

I think that's going to be my answer on that. I have nothing further to add, really.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Okay.

Typically—I'm going to assume that this is not the first time it has occurred—when a member of Parliament inappropriately spends on whatever it might be, there is an expectation that the money would be returned. The regulation specifies a specific time. Could you walk me through what would typically happen? If I inappropriately spent $300 on an ad, your office would tell me that I have to pay it back. Is that not correct?

[Mark G. Watters]

Yes. In most typical situations, those where there's perhaps a disagreement on an amount that's claimed, the staff of finance works with the member to either receive a cheque for an amount that's been.... If the amount has been previously disbursed, we would recover directly from the member or we might short a claim payment for a subsequent payment to a member.

Those are the most typical situations. They typically don't even go before the board, because it's pretty well a matter of whether something was allowed or not under the manual of allowances and services. If somebody over-claims for something, the adjustment is made rather immediately. We don't get into the provisions of the bylaws that you were just speaking of. Those adjustments are made, I guess, on the spot, that kind of thing.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Right. But typically, if I owe MOB $500 or $1,000 and for whatever reasons I'm not refunding the MOB, what actions are you going to take to ensure that I refund it?

[Mark G. Watters]

You'd probably get a call from the chief financial officer if that were to happen. Usually that results in the payment of a cheque.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

You would personally be contacting me, saying, “Look, you owe us some money.”

[Mark G. Watters]

In the rare times that's happened in the past, that's what we've done. Typically the payment has been made.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Have you ever had a situation where it has not been made?

[Mark G. Watters]

In the situations we've just been talking about, where there's an issue with MOB moneys being spent in that particular way, I think we pretty well have collected everything we've needed to collect from members.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Right. If you have a problem in terms of collecting it, then you could ultimately fall back on the rule that says you have 60 days, I believe, or 90 days in order to make payment. At some point you can say, “Look, you have 90 days to pay it back.”

[Mark G. Watters]

It's actually bylaw 20 that talks about a member being more than 90 days in arrears. We would first determine that there's an arrears, that this amount is due for collection—as I said, this has typically not happened in the past—and then the chief financial officer may deduct from any payment other than, as you were saying, sessional allowances, additional salaries, salaries for parliamentary secretaries, the additional salaries for the leader of the opposition, recognized parties, House leaders, etc. Those are amounts that we cannot touch. Under these provisions of the bylaws, we would reduce claims.

That's done routinely, I suppose, on small adjustments on claims. A member might send in a claim for, I don't know, anything from a few hundred dollars to 1,500 dollars' worth of things. If $1,400 of the $1,500 claim is approved, the $100 that's left is typically netted out against another payment.

We rarely get into this situation. In fact, I have never been faced with this situation since being appointed chief financial officer of the House in August of 2011.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Taxpayers have nothing to be fearful of, in the sense that the office administration will in fact go out of its way to ensure that the taxpayer is protected and the money is ultimately recovered. Is that correct?

[Mark G. Watters]

That's correct.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Winnipeg North, MB]

Finally, to this—

[The Chair, Conservative, Joe Preston]

Mr. Lamoureux, that's seven minutes.

We have to end things at the bottom of the hour, folks, so let's do a two-minute round and finish it off.

Mr. Lukiwski, you have a couple of minutes.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

In that case, very quickly, Speaker Scheer, you mentioned that you have seen the report on the death of the assailant who stormed Parliament Hill on October 22 and that in a couple of weeks the public would receive a redacted copy of that.

Where do parliamentarians fit into that scheme of things? Are we going to have advance notice? Is our copy, if we get one, going to be redacted, or are we lumped into the category of the general public?

[Andrew Scheer, Conservative, Regina—Qu'Appelle, SK]

As you can appreciate, there are a lot of considerations into the best way to make this information public. The OPP looked at the entire incident. We decided that we would commission our own report, because our own service personnel were not automatically included in the report that was going to be done for the RCMP. Ever since then we've really been trying to work with the RCMP to make sure that we're moving in the same direction and we're working in a complementary fashion.

As you can appreciate, a report that includes the names of security personnel, the names of constables, where people were standing at what time, and where resources were deployed, some of that information would.... It would not be appropriate to release that. It would actually do far more damage to security than enhancements, so we're currently in the process of deciding the best way to make that public.

[Tom Lukiwski, Conservative, Regina—Lumsden—Lake Centre, SK]

Would parliamentarians get a separate report, or would we be receiving the same report that the members of the general public would?