Something smells bad here. Why aren't the Liberals and NDP shouting about the lack of accountability if MP's expense reports aren't audited by Sheila Fraser? They should be at the Conservatives throats over this issue. Instead we get this garbage from a Liberal MP....
MPs, Mr. Szabo explained to a reporter, get sued a lot -- for sexual harrassment and wrongful dismissal, for example -- and naturally they have to fight, settle or pay out these lawsuits on the taxpayers' dime. “If [expenses] were opened to the Auditor General and open to the public, all of a sudden people would jump to conclusions without having all the facts,” he said. “If you identify the member, or the law firm or all this other stuff, all of a sudden people could say ... what’s wrong with this member, this member is getting sued all the time.”
Let's use his argument and turn it to the Afghan issue....
If [documents] were opened to the MP's and open to the public, all of a sudden people would jump to conclusions without having all the facts.
It's apparently a win for DEMOCRACY when the MP's get to see all the documents regarding the Afghan war, but DEMOCRACY would be distorted if the taxpayer got to see what MP's are spending our money on. Silence.
I can understand why the Conservatives would be reluctant to allow the audit. Our biased media would only report on supposed Conservative wrong doings, and give the opposition parties a pass. If you doubt me, why hasn't the media reported on Liberal MP Pablo? Why hasn't CBC or CTV been hammering on his accident where he failed to blow, and was therefore arrested? How about Pat Martins assistant yelling and protesting at the Ann Coulter lecture? Silence.
Given that the media is on the oppositions side, why is the opposition fighting an audit of their expense accounts? They have the majority at committee, they could order it done, but they refuse to allow the audit. What are our MP's hiding? Where is the transparency? The accountability? Silence.
If the opposition is so sure that those Afghan documents are necessary for an understanding of what went on during a war, why are they hiding their expense account documents? Maybe the Speaker needs to rule on this issue, the same way he ruled on the last one...open up the books, it is the taxpayers rights that are being trampled here.
I guess the opposition thinks a witch hunt to find an Afghan hit with a shoe is more important than taxpayers finding out that we have been hit with bricks.
So, if the opposition can whine and use Parliament as a tool to get documents for purely political reasons, then taxpayers want Parliament to do the same with our MP's.
Open up the books! We are not talking chump change here, we are talking about $500,000,000! See all those zeros, that's our money, and we have no clue how it is being spent. Let Sheila audit those books! This refusal looks bad on all parties. I guess the opposition can't find a way to make it so that only the Conservative MP's would be audited, if they could, they would be demanding that Sheila Fraser get a look at the expense accounts. Seeing as how every MP would be treated as equal, they are opposing it.
MP's should post their expense records online, that might keep them inline!!
