Monday, May 17, 2010

Post Expense Records ONLINE To Keep MP's INLINE!

If MP's should have the right to look at all military documents in a time of war and potentially cause the troops harm, why can't the taxpayers see the same MP's expense reports?

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!!

5 comments:

Joanne (True Blue) said...

Great post Hunter!!

Alberta Girl said...

Hunter...I posted this over at BLY and am copying out of sheer laziness -LOL

Just a bit more info Joanne….I heard some guest ( a liberal MP who disagrees with this) on Dave Rutherford (Roy Green hosting) yesterday who shed a bit of light on this….

She said – this was not a vote of all MP’s but a decision of the Board of internal economy…I found a couple of links. I think we need to ask them why they made the decision.

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/HouseOfCommons/InternalEconomyBoard.aspx

http://www2.parl.gc.ca/Parlinfo/Compilations/HouseOfCommons/InternalEconomyBoard.aspx

Maybe we could start with “Miss High and Mighty, You Conservatives need to open the books, Libby Davies

I agree they should open their books, but we can't tar all MP's with this decision - but we should be demanding an answer from each and every board members (note the majority btw)

West Coast Teddi said...

Why why why can we see the Afstan docs but not the wine bar bill?

We need to write our MPs and get an answer.

MariaS said...

Excellent post as usual Hunter. Now you know why the lefties always go after you. You are GOOD at hitting the nail squarely on the head and that means major migraines for those nitwits.

I have had misgivings about the way the MPs are spending taxpayers' money from the day I saw an article on "secret clubs for MPs". It stinks to high heaven. I have a link at my blog.

arctic_front said...

if you sent your kid to the store to buy milk and you gave him $20, you expect him to bring home all the change. Same difference. We send our MP's to Ottawa and we expect to see the change left over. I was previously un-aware they weren't audited. this should be the law of the land and any party that vigorously supports this idea will soar in the polls.. the fact that none are, speaks loudly...