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  If we look at section 20 of the bylaws as well, it is the only place where we have a specific timeline in place. It says: If a Member is 90 days or more in arrears in an amount owed to the House of Commons, the Chief Financial Officer —which would be me, in this particular ca

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 likeli

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 thi

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 f

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 lowe

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  —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 th

Procedure and House Affairs committee  They have 57 members.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's right.

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  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