moved:
That the House recognize the importance of transparency and accountability in the expenditure of taxpayers’ money and also recognize that the majority of parties have already begun disclosing the travel and hospitality expenses of their Members; and therefore call on the Board of Internal Economy to instruct the non-partisan professional administrative staff of the House of Commons to begin posting all travel expenses incurred under the travel point system as well as hospitality expenses of Members to the Parliament of Canada website in a manner similar to the guidelines used by the government for proactive disclosure of ministerial expenses.
Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Winnipeg North for the most enthusiastic welcome to the House that I have seen in years. I have to say that I am very grateful to him.
I would also like to congratulate and thank my colleague from Newfoundland and Labrador, from the beautiful riding of Avalon, for seconding this motion.
Sunshine is the ultimate disinfectant, as many people will say. In this particular case, I do believe that sunshine, meaning transparency, would make us more accountable to the public. We want to be more accountable to the public for a very good reason, which is that the money we spend here is not our money, but belongs to the Canadian public, to the taxpayers of this country.
By accepting this motion, we would be saying to the country that we are ready, willing, and able to report to the Canadian public as to how its tax dollars are being spent, especially in the execution of what we do as members of Parliament and in general as parliamentarians.
Before addressing the motion at hand, I want to back up for a few moments to talk about what we as a party have done over the past while.
The Liberal Party's open Parliament proposals were announced by our leader, the member for Papineau, on June 5, 2013. The following are the main points of what we consider to be an open Parliament.
First would be to require that members of Parliament and senators proactively disclose travel hospitality expenses made by them and their staff.
Second would be to introduce legislation to make meetings of the Board of Internal Economy of the House of Commons open and transparent to the public. The ability of the committee to go in camera where necessary, for example on sensitive HR matters, will remain but not as is currently the case, that is, by default. The Senate Board of Internal Economy is already public.
Third would be to create a common quarterly and more detailed online expense report—which, of course, we can see at liberal.ca—for each member. This is for spending by members of Parliament and the Senate. It is also more easily accessed and usable by the public from the homepage of the Parliament of Canada website.
Fourth would be for the House to work with the Auditor General to develop mandatory performance audits of the House of Commons and Senate administration every three years, as well as public guidelines under which the Auditor General would be called in to perform more detailed audits of parliamentary spending.
Also, the leader of the Liberal Party introduced a private member's bill at about the same time, which is on notice in the House of Commons. The bill contains three main points. It would amend the Parliament of Canada Act to ensure that the Board of Internal Economy's meetings were open to the public by law. The bill would only allow the Board of Internal Economy to meet behind closed doors if the subject matter being discussed were related to security, staff relations or tenders, with the unanimous consent of members present.
These are our initiatives. They would entail an open Parliament where we could go to our websites and find out what we had been spending on travel and hospitality. It is similar to what is now being done by ministers of the crown, of course, as brought in by the former Liberal government under Paul Martin.
I would like to once again put forward in the House a detailed understanding of why we do this.
Let us look at the motion, which begins with “That the House recognize”. Most members of this House, but not all, already recognize this. However, we need to get unanimity to make sure that everyone is onboard with what we are doing.
The motion is as follows:
That the House recognize the importance of transparency and accountability in the expenditure of taxpayers’ money and also recognize that the majority of parties have already begun disclosing...call on the Board of Internal Economy to instruct the non-partisan professional administrative staff of the House of Commons to begin posting all travel expenses incurred under the travel point system....
I will stop here for a moment on the travel point system, as many members accumulate a certain number of points to come to Ottawa, regardless of the price of individual tickets. I come from central Newfoundland, and it can be an expensive endeavour to get here even at the best of times. For others, it is not as expensive. Therefore, the point system is in place, but it has to be transparent. We have to show Canadians how we spend their money so that we can effectively do our jobs.
The motion concludes with:
...as well as hospitality expenses of Members to the Parliament of Canada website in a manner similar to the guidelines used by the government for proactive disclosure of ministerial expenses.
We hope that all members of the House will practise what Liberals call a “new way of transparency” that allows Canadians to go online to see what their member of Parliament or other members within the House spend their taxpayers' money on. It is their money. I certainly believe that they have a right to see how we spend it. An investor in a company has the same right. If people readily give their money to financial advisors, they certainly have the right to find out how those advisors are spending or investing their money, in many cases.
Obviously, the very reason, the root cause of that, is that it is their money and they entrust those people to do that. In a similar vein, the people of this country are investing in good governance and, therefore, it is their money being invested and we, as parliamentarians, as their direct representatives, must come clean and show them what we are spending it on.
We are tasking the non-partisan professional administrative staff at the House of Commons with the responsibility to post all travel expenses incurred under the travel points system, as well as hospitality expenses, and if we use the proactive disclosure model, we can strengthen transparency and accountability in the House of Commons. That is what this motion is about today.
Canadians' faith in public office holders in politics has been seriously shaken recently by the ethics scandal rooted in a $90,000 payment by the Prime Minister's chief of staff to a sitting legislator and the continued secrecy of the Conservatives. There requires a lot more sunshine that we are not seeing cast upon a situation that to say is tawdry is putting it lightly. There is a great deal of suspicion that has been caused by that particular incident, and Canadians are now saying they demand better of their direct representatives, and this is what this motion would do. It would demand that much better, to which we have to answer the call and say to Canadians, “We know what you are saying and we have to practise it”. We preach it, but we have to practise it. Again I say, we preach but we have to practise.
That is why in June, as I mentioned earlier, the leader of the Liberal Party introduced an open parliament plan, which would do the following: require proactive disclosure of travel and hospitality expenses; open up meetings of the secretive House of Commons Board of Internal Economy; ensure that quarterly online expense reports are easily accessible by Canadians; and, of course, the final point, which is very important, work with the Auditor General to develop public guidelines to ensure proper spending in Parliament.
I will even admit to the House right now that for several years, the expenses that I incur in my office are in a binder and sit in my office. Any constituent of mine can come in and look at them. I will hand them over. Constituents can go through them as much as they please and if they have any questions, I am more than happy to entertain those questions. That is an essential part of being a public servant. If one enters the life of public service, this is what one has to do. It is not something provided as a favour to the public. It is something required as a responsible measure of public representation. That is what we must do. That is what we must endeavour to do and improve upon each and every time we enter the House, each and every time we are elected to represent our particular constituencies, all 308 of them, soon to be 338.
As I mentioned earlier, for all members of the House right now, people can go online and get the general categories of expenses through the official channels, but what Liberals would like to do, and what we did as a party, was to go a step further and allow people to find out the nature of the expenses, especially when it comes to travel and hospitality. Again, that is modelled after what was done for ministers' expenses back in the early 2000s under the Paul Martin government.
We thought that was the model to use and, therefore, we extended it to the MPs who sit in the House, certainly from a party perspective on this side of the House. Some parties have followed suit; other parties have not. Nonetheless, we hope over the next little while, we will find that, with proactive disclosure—we cannot just force MPs to do this. Nobody should be forced to do this. We want MPs to be inspired to allow them to expose to Canadians how they are spending their money.
There are so many things we can improve upon. We, as a party, have not improved them all, but we are striving to do so. We were the first to do so, because we think that the most responsible thing we can do is to lead by example. If as parents we behave in such a way in front of our children, to provide the ultimate example of how we would like them to behave, we should certainly take our own advice and lead by example as representatives here in the House.
People trust us to manage their money and make the decisions that they feel are right for the betterment of this country in general, not just in their riding.
I understand it when people say that we need to move along and do this as a group. We have. Proactive disclosure is just that. It is proactive in that it puts us out there, to say we need to move beyond what is already required of us, to lead by example. That, in and of itself, is probably a good measure of good governance.
We should not just sit here and be reactive to the latest scandal that appears in 140 characters or less on Twitter. We should not only respond to whatever scandal comes up in breaking news on cable news channels or any other type of media. If we become reactive only to what the people require, we will find ourselves far behind where the people want us to be, and we will not measure up. That is not a question of losing elections. It is just a question of providing good representation.
By and large, people feel that expenses need to be exposed to the public, which is why they ask for it. That is why these news items garner a lot of attention. It gives the appearance of concealing something that was done wrong.
Pardon the example, but there is an old expression that says we can dress up a pig as much as we want, but it is still a pig at the end of the day. Therein lies the analogy of some of the issues that take place. We go above and beyond the call of duty to make it look like something else, when it in fact sits exactly as it stands.
More often than not, we tend to undermine the intelligence of the average citizen of this country. Let us not kid ourselves. I am not casting aspersions upon any particular issue. I am talking about issues in general that garner a lot of negative reactions from the public because, essentially, it comes down to one nugget of emotion for the people, which is how stupid do we think they are? That is pretty much where we should be going, to say that we do not think that they are that stupid or naive. We do not want to conceal anything from them because we do not think that they will understand it, or that we should wait until the other person acts or until the right machinery is in place so that it gets done. We should be proactive.
It is kind of ironic that we use proactive disclosure. Disclosure should be something that is natural for any person who is a representative of the people. It is odd that we call it proactive, but it is proactive because we are doing it. There is an array of politicians and an array of representatives like us who are not.
The rule states that we do not have to go this far, which is why we said that it is not good enough. Just because the rule says we do not have to go that far does not mean that we do not have to step in the direction that we feel is right and that Canadians feel is right.
That is why I am very happy to be moving this motion today. I certainly believe that this is a step in the right direction. This is disclosure. This is the sunshine that will prove to be the ultimate disinfectant.
Is it the final word? Is that it? Is that all we need to do? No, there are always improvements. We have to make sure it is right. That should not stop us from doing the right thing.
Proactive disclosure is one of the those things that is inspiring to many people across this country. I hope that some day, every parliamentarian, every member of the House of Commons, will partake in this.
I look at some who have done it. My colleague right here did it, despite many obstacles. He did it several years ago. Good on him for doing it. He was re-elected for the right reasons, not because voters disliked someone else but because he did the right thing. A lot of people in his riding recognized that.
By tasking the non-partisan professional administrative staff of the House of Commons with the responsibility to post all travel expenses incurred under the travel point system, as well as hospitality expenses, using the proactive disclosure model, we hope this model will serve the purpose to formalize what we should be doing in the future.
Canadians have a right to know how their money is being spent. Members should not just take my word for it. I have received several emails over the past six months from the average citizen, saying just that. I repeat: Canadians have a right to know how their money is being spent. That comment was sent to me some time ago in an email. I thought, who are we, as the direct representatives, to counter that point? It certainly would not make a lot of sense.
It has been nearly a year since our leader announced that the Liberals would raise the bar on openness and transparency by proactively disclosing travel and hospitality expenses, and yet it still not being performed in a standardized way, for all parties, by the House of Commons.
We hope that this motion and this debate today will not so much lecture parties to do this, although it may come to that, as inspire all members of Parliament to do this. We want a uniform, standardized system that applies to all members of Parliament. We want to see all expenses in one spot, in a format that is easy to find and easy to understand.
That is why on liberal.ca, people can go directly to their member of Parliament and see these proactive disclosure measures on travel and hospitality. They can see proactive disclosure, a detailed model of disclosure, designed and implemented.
As I mentioned earlier, former Prime Minister Paul Martin, in 2003, brought in this model to be adhered to by the ministers of the day, and they were his own ministers. He did not require all parliamentarians to adhere to it, just his own ministers. It was a gutsy thing to do in that situation, but he did it. We think that should serve as a model for all MPs in this House, despite party representations or independence.
I believe that at the end of the day, people would ultimately agree this is the sunshine that acts as a disinfectant, which they will be happy to see because it will show how we are doing our jobs with their tax dollars. How effectively we are doing our jobs will be seen on election day.
The policies of defence, justice, free trade, crime, and others can be judged, but now people can also judge their representative on how they personally spend taxpayers' money. That should be a natural extension of what we are as members of Parliament.
Everybody in the House likes to preach about being open and transparent. I encourage all members of the House to now practise what they preach.