Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. As the law clerk has explained, the process would be laid out in progressive steps, as per section 19 in the bylaws. The Clerk of the House, under the authority of the board, would first of all give notice to a member that an amount is outstanding. As Mr.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  It says “90 days”, so I guess absent specification it would be calendar days.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Mr. Chair, it would depend on the date that the request was made of a member for reimbursement. If a date was specified—the board would like repayment by such-and-such a date—that is the date from which the 90 days would start to count down.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. This follows an assessment made by the Chief Actuary of Canada, who works for Treasury Board. When he analyzed these pension plans, he determined that the contributions could be reduced, in light of the new configuration of the plan and the likelihood of upcoming changes in employee contribution rates—the employees being the members—and those of the employer, that is the House.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Yes, absolutely. Thank you for the opportunity to respond, Mr. Chair. We are doing two things. First, we're investing in trying to be more proactive with members by providing training sessions. There were six training sessions last week on disclosure and what this means. The thinking behind that is if we can get to you and let you know what our expectations are at the beginning, then we will have fewer problems on the back end, so that people are more accustomed to doing this.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you, Mr. Speaker. Mr. Chair, we are planning on hiring—well, we actually did because this was done in the fall of last year, and the committee agreed with the request for supplementary estimates last year to fund this partially—13 employees, 11 of those in my sector, in finance, and 2 in IT, as well as ongoing support for the good care and nurturing of those employees, in terms of offices and supplies, and those types of things, and mostly to look after the interrelationship with the members.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's correct. I do.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The answer to that, Mr. Chair, as I think was said earlier by Mr. MacKenzie, is that the U.K. model was built on allowances rather than reimbursement against receipt, and our system is built on reimbursement against receipt. So the chance of that happening here would be much lower.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  —dummy receipts actually provided to us for reimbursement. It would be fraud, as opposed to a regime in which it's based more on allowances. There's a lot of history as to why that is the case in the U.K. There was a huge push to keep salaries low and keep allowances high, and the House and IPSA would talk to you about that if you were to call them back.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  The regime we have here is quite different. Even in the salary of a parliamentarian in Canada versus a parliamentarian in the U.K., there's a huge difference, and they're beginning to grapple with that in the U.K. The drivers are completely different.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  But they would need to be supported, as I was saying a little earlier, by other infrastructure. They would need to be housed in a facility. They would need to have the support of a human resources department, or they would have to be able to buy that service from somewhere else.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  They have 57 members.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's right.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  Thank you. Basically, Mr. Chair, the way I understand the question is, what would be the guide to proceed if we decided to go along this particular route?

Procedure and House Affairs committee  First of all, let me say that I think the 21 people in Finance Services who do the work of the adjudication of the claims would have to be moved over, out of the Finance Services of the House, and then basically replicate in the new agency what they do here. That can be done with some machinery change, depending on the entity that's created and that type of thing.