Mr. Speaker, I am proud to rise in this House and congratulate the Liberal Party. It does not happen very often. I have been here for 10 years, and I have had some difficulty with some of the decisions that the Liberals have taken.
I say this as a former financial administrator, one of the only people in the House who has actually prepared documents for audit. I am well aware that when putting expenses together, we need to ensure three things: that they are uniform, complete, and verified.
That is what we in the NDP have been saying now for years, going back to the very beginning when I was first elected in 2004. I was one of the first, along with a number of my NDP colleagues, to post verified expenses from the House of Commons online. I am proud to say that every single member of the NDP caucus now does the same thing. Their constituents can go online to their MP's website and find out what their MP has been spending. That is very important. It is a principle that we have continued for years, to ensure that in every case, if they are represented by an NDP MP, that they can go online and get the complete and verified expenses that the NDP MP has been putting forward over the course of the year. We are the only party that does that, and there is a small number of Conservatives who do that.
However, I am congratulating the Liberal Party. Rather than going with the games and partial disclosure that the Liberals were trying over the course of the fall, they have come forward with what has been the NDP position: that we have uniform, complete, and verified expenses.
That is extremely important. People need to be able to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. That continues on in the long tradition of NDP financial management. As members know, the annual compendium from the ministry of finance, which federally is certainly not a hotbed of social democrats, has been saying year after year, for 20 years, that NDP governments are the best at balancing budgets and paying down debt. That is a record we are very proud of. We are simply better at doing that than other parties.
We were very proud to see that the Liberal Party has moved toward the NDP position. Now, from the Conservative amendment, we are seeing a convergence on the issue of ensuring that the expenses that Canadians are looking for from their members of Parliament are uniform and complete and verified. That is extremely important. That would mean it would not only be when constituents have an NDP MP that they will be able to go online and find what their MP has been spending. Indeed, from all parties, we will have uniform disclosure, which is verified by the House of Commons. That is extremely important. It will also be complete.
I say that “complete” is important because we have seen partial disclosures. Partial disclosures are toxic to audits. A partial disclosure can be that a member—or in an institution, an individual—can choose to release whatever makes him or her look good. We have certainly seen that, particularly from the Conservative side. I refer to the member for Vancouver Island North, who refused to answer the question that I asked him a few minutes ago.
However, the reality is that when we look through the disclosure of Conservative MPs, a third of its caucus has refused to participate in even the partial disclosure program that the Conservatives have put forward. Of course, many of the Conservative senators have refused as well. That is simply not good enough. Canadians expect better. Canadians demand to see uniform and complete and verified expenses, whether a person is in the Senate, which we believe should be abolished, or in the House of Commons.
We have seen a very good motion from the Liberal Party, which we are going to make even better. At the end of my speech, I will be offering an amendment. My colleague has already expressed some interest in accepting that amendment. He certainly seemed amenable to the Conservative amendment.
The member has done a real service by presenting this motion today in the House that would allow us to move forward, to actually add these elements on or around April 1. That was helpful from the Conservative side, and then, from our side, having the Auditor General mandate to be part of verifying the expenses of MPs.
I will give a bit of history because I think that is important. The history started back in the halcyon days of June 2013. On June 18, the NDP presented a motion. We said that given the importance of having that full disclosure and transparency, we would move to have the procedure and House affairs committee do away with the secretive Board of Internal Economy which now regulates the expenses of MPs.
Members will recall that on June 18, which is an historic date, the other parties agreed. The Conservatives said that maybe it would be good to do away with the secretive Board of Internal Economy. No longer would the expenses and difficulties of MPs be treated in a backroom, but would be policed by MPs themselves. Who would expect MPs to police their own expenses? That is not rocket science to the average Canadian. They all feel it is important to have a system with checks and balances. When we have MPs policing themselves, it does not seem to make a lot of sense.
On June 18, we offered that motion. It was adopted unanimously. Then we took it to the procedure and House affairs committee, and members will recall the unfortunate results.
We had a lot of important testimony. I would contradict the member for Vancouver Island North, who said something a few minutes ago about the Auditor General supporting the idea that the Auditor General not have jurisdiction over the expenses of MPs. I would like to be clear that is completely false. I will quote Sheila Fraser, the former Auditor General, who said, “I think Parliament's auditor should audit Parliament”. The current Auditor General came before the procedure and House affairs committee and also reiterated what Sheila Fraser said, that the Auditor General needs to have jurisdiction over the expenses of MPs.
Like most Canadians, members might question what that means: “Does the Auditor General not have jurisdiction now?” That is true. It is a surprise to so many Canadians. We have a secretive Board of Internal Economy that is maintained by the current government. It does not want to see that changed. The Conservatives steadfastly refuse to give the Auditor General that control and oversight over the expenses of MPs.
What is wrong with this picture? Even Conservative voters would say, “Are you kidding me? Do you mean that the Conservatives want to keep all of this in the backroom and want to keep the Auditor General away? That doesn't make any sense”. That indeed is the position of the Conservatives. They have a partial expense scheme. We can take out all of their senators and the dozens of MPs who do not get involved—and for anyone who wants to check that out, they can go online and see how many Conservatives are missing from the partial expense scheme—and at the same time, they do not want to involve the Auditor General and do not want to do away with the secretive self-policing of the Board of Internal Economy.
The current Auditor General thought differently when he said, “independent... oversight [of MPs' expenses] would strengthen members' accountability and enhance the public's confidence in the governance mechanisms of the House of Commons.”
We have had both past and current auditors general saying very clearly that they want jurisdiction over the expenses of MPs. We have also had the current Auditor General say that we need to have independent oversight.
The procedure and House affairs committee was called upon to look into that study. As a result of the NDP motion that at the time, on June 18, was supported unanimously as I recall, the procedure and House affairs committee heard from a number of witnesses. They provided testimony on what type of independent body could replace the secretive Board of Internal Economy. That secretive self-policing could be replaced by something like what we have in the United Kingdom, an independent parliamentary standards authority, which has independent oversight over the expenses of MPs. It is not self-policing in the United Kingdom; there is independent oversight.
That is a key policy difference between the NDP and the Conservatives. The Conservatives want self-policing of MPs, and the NDP wants to see independent oversight. There could not be a clearer division between those who want to see real accountability and those who do not.
We believe that the Auditor General should have a role, and I will be speaking to that idea in a moment and offering an amendment that I believe my colleague from the Liberal Party would accept. We also believe the Auditor General should be given the ability to look into MPs' expenses, and not on an invitational basis. That is where the Conservatives currently stand their ground. They say that we can invite them in if we all agree. That amounts to self-policing again. We are saying that the Auditor General should have the resources and the ability to go in and check.
I just got an update from our fabulous lobby team. It is always very interesting to see what is happening on the floor of the House of Commons.
We also looked into having the ability for access to information to also cover MPs' expenses, and our report coming out of the procedure and House affairs committee very clearly spoke to this idea. The Information Commissioner has called for it. The Information Commissioner does believe that access to information should also cover Parliament Hill and MPs' offices, with a system of checks and balances in place to preserve confidentiality.
When we are talking about expenditures, we are talking about something that is part of the public domain. We brought forward, after the unanimous support in the House of Commons on June 18, a plan to make MPs' expenses much more accountable and to have full disclosure of them. We had already pushed for the April 1 date that all parties have agreed to, and we are very happy that we will see enhanced disclosure as of April 1. We will start to see this information released on a three-month basis, and that is very important too.
What is most important in that overall framework is that we are talking about uniform, complete, and verified expenses. We are not talking about partial expenses or schemes whereby MPs self-police with no oversight from the Auditor General and can release whatever they choose to release and not release whatever they choose not to release. It has to be complete, it has to be verified, and it has to be uniform so that we can compare one member of Parliament to another. For the most part, members of Parliament work hard and make sure they are justifying their expenses, but if we do not have apples compared to apples, it is difficult for the public to compare and make sure they know what their MP is spending compared to other members of Parliament.
The fact that all NDP MPs put this information right up on their websites as part of the information they send out to their constituents is very important. It is not for show. It is a very practical tool that my constituents have been using for eight years.
For eight years, with my annual disclosures, I have been getting questions asking why I spent a certain amount on something or other. I can answer those questions. They come in from my constituents, because for eight years my constituents have been able to go directly to my website, find my expenses, and find out how much I spent.
This would be happening on a three-month basis, and that is good. It means that every three months we will be responding to the questions that quite legitimately come from our constituents who pay our salaries. That is extremely important.
The enhanced disclosure on April 1 will also increase disclosure and transparency, but neither I nor the NDP caucus believes that is enough. Those three other elements have to be part of the package. I know Conservatives have to be dragged kicking and screaming into more disclosure, but we are saying, and we will continue to say, that the Auditor General needs to have the ability to go in and examine MPs' expenses, as he has requested and as previous Auditors General have requested.
It has to be done in a very clear way, not in a way that would cause the Office of the Auditor General to stop other expense studies it was currently engaged in because of a lack of resources. Under the Conservative government, we have seen the Auditor General's department being cut back severely. That makes it more difficult for that good institution to do an effective job on behalf of taxpayers. We say that the Auditor General needs to be examining the expenses of MPs and that the Auditor General needs to have adequate resources to that.
We are also saying that access to information should apply to Parliament Hill. Since the Information Commissioner has requested it, we think it is an extremely important element to include as part of an overall transparency package.
As well, we are not going to give up on the idea that the secretive and unaccountable Board of Internal Economy should be removed from overseeing MP expenses.
I mentioned the United Kingdom. It has an independent standards authority that is working very well. Another example of independent oversight in Canada is the Government of Manitoba, an NDP government, which has put in place a commissioner to oversee those expenses.
I think it would be fair to say that if we asked 100 Canadians if MPs should be policing themselves, 99 out of 100 would say, “Gosh, no; there needs to be some kind of independent oversight. We should not have MPs policing themselves on expenses. There has to be independent oversight.” That is what 99 out of 100 people would say. The 100th person would probably ask that the question be repeated, and would then probably agree that there should not be self-policing but an independent oversight of MPs' expenses.
That is the package we put forward. It was supported by testimony from the Information Commissioner. It was also supported by testimony from not only the current Auditor General but also from previous auditors general. They said very clearly that they need that jurisdiction, which they currently do not have, over MPs' expenses. It was also reinforced by many other witnesses as well.
Tragically, as members know, we ran into a brick wall after the public support received on June 18 and a great deal of support from across the country. I personally had a number of calls and emails from coast to coast to coast from Canadians saying, “Good on the NDP for presenting the motion. Good on all parties for accepting it.” However, I guess the Conservatives were following up on that old adage of forming a committee, a committee being a dead-end road whereby a good idea is taken down into the back streets and quietly strangled. Indeed, that is what happened in this case. Those very good ideas that clearly meet with support from the vast majority of Canadians were strangled in committee.
We presented a dissenting report, circulated widely across the country, in which we called upon the government to look at this issue of the Auditor General. We are not going to give up on the issue of having the Auditor General look over MPs' expenses. We believe strongly and firmly that we need that independent, credible body looking and making sure that MPs' expenses have been properly analyzed.
We do not agree with the self-policing that currently seems to be in vogue on the government side. We honestly believe that the Board of Internal Economy's self-policing of MPs' expenses should be ended. Obviously we would receive a great deal of support on this issue from the public.
Those are the ideas that we continue to put forward. We know the government does not support those ideas, but we think Canadians do. Therefore, I will propose the following motion.
I move, seconded by my colleague from Terrebonne—Blainville, that the motion be amended by adding, after the words “ministerial expenses”, the following: and call on the Bureau of Internal Economy to invite the Auditor General to audit this disclosure.