Procedure and House Affairs committee  When you think there are about 27 sitting weeks, a lot of that is back and forth to the constituency, and then the balance would be special trips. There are 25 of those, so on average 15 or so of those might be used; 44 is the number we work with. When we do an annual report to t

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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 tal

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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.

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

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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.

Procedure and House Affairs committee  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 fro

Procedure and House Affairs committee  That's correct.