Putting a face on MP's travel expenses

MPs appear to have crept closer to a deal last week on how to accommodate a request by Canada's auditor-general to have a look at their expenses. Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats had originally refused to let Sheila Fraser look at their books.

But the unusual united front crumbled as public pressure mounted.

Today, the Board of Internal Economy will meet to set the terms for any future audits.

And, in fact, even as negotiations proceeded last week, a number of MPs started to post their expenses online.

Not surprisingly, the travel portion attracted a lot of attention.

Travel is expensive and MPs take a lot of trips to and from the riding, for traveling to committee meetings, caucus retreats and that type of thing.  In total, MPs spent more than 27 million dollars on travel last year.
    
Every year, MPs get 64 travel credits.  Each credit counts for a return trip between Ottawa and the riding, whether that is in the Yukon or Montreal.  The MP's designated traveler, who in most cases is their spouse, may use any number of those trips and the MP's dependents, usually children, can take up to 15 return trips.

So, just as MPs who fly to remote parts of the country will have higher travel bills...so will MPs who use their credits to move their families around.

Last week, there was a lot made about one particular MP who had a really high travel bill.  Russ Hiebert is the MP for the B.C. riding of South Surrey/White Rock/Cloverdale. He has two young children and he and his wife have made a commitment to keep the family together as much as possible.  So when he travels, they travel too.

And while he's not the only MP who does this, Hiebert has the highest travel expenses: $214,000 a year.

This has raised some controversy and that's why I decided to look at the issue of travel for MPs and their families.  Because, it's one thing to associate a name with a big travel bill in an annual report, it's another thing altogether when you hear from the MPs themselves.

I requested interviews with Russ Hiebert, Chris Warkentin and Jeff Watson...three Conservatives with young families, but they all turned me down.

So this story begins outside the West Block of the parliament buildings, right after Question Period last Thursday afternoon. I meet Liberal MP Glen Pearson as his cab pulls up out front...and I hop in.

Pearson to the cabdriver: "You ready for the airport?"
Cabdriver: "Yes I am sir."
Pearson: "Back home to see the family."

Pearson is the MP for London, Ontario, a seven or eight-hour drive from Ottawa.  

"I don't know what the MPs do who have young families who live in B.C. or the Yukon, like Larry Bagnell, a Liberal that I know who has a fairly new baby.  And he has to come from the Yukon and it takes him two days to travel.  It's really hard.  So you leave, you get on the flight, you get back home, usually just in time to say goodnight to the kids and tuck them into bed.  And then you hope to see them the next morning at breakfast and then I usually try to walk them to school if I can."

Pearson, a former firefighter has four adult biological children. And then, a few years ago, he and his wife adopted a little girl from Sudan.

"I became an MP and I had one child from Sudan and I tried to manage it and then we found her twin sister and brother alive in Darfur and I wasn't prepared for it.  So when they came to Canada, suddenly here I was, I was leaving kids that have never had a father, right?  To come here and be gone for a week and just hope to see them on weekends."

This week, as the debate raged over whether the auditor-general should audit MPs' expenses, Pearson kept out of the fray.

But then the travel expenses of Hiebert came to light (the previously mentioned $214,000 for him to travel back and forth between Ottawa and his British Columbia riding with his wife and two kids in tow.) The news caused a predictable reaction. Here's how the public reacted on the streets of Halifax:

"I don't think that free flights for their family is a necessity, considering that they make a fair bit of money.  Flights for business purposes only should be included. "

"I think that it's reasonable for them to have access to flights for them and their family but adding up to $214,000 dollars for the taxpayer is a little bit high.  I think it should be specifically for business purposes and not for family use."

But Pearson points out that MPs are simply following the rules established by the auditor general back in 2001.

Nevertheless, the public and media continue to question the need for so much travel, questioning whether MPs knew what they were getting into when they stood for election.

Nathan Cullen knew he'd be in for a gruelling travel schedule when he became the MP for the northern B.C. riding of Skeena-Bulkley Valley, but life is unpredictable.

Cullen steals a few minutes away from the House of Commons to phone his wife Diana in Smithers, B.C. She's pregnant with twins and unable to travel to Ottawa these days.

"Hello?"
"Hi darlin how ya doing?"  -
"Okay."
"How are the kids doing?"
"They're good."
"Yeah, yeah..."
"I got one baby kicking away as we speak"

Without overnighting in Vancouver, it takes at least 14 hours to get to and from the riding.
And now that the babies are on the way, Cullen recalls advice doled out by former cabinet minister David Emerson.

"He said to me, just after I got elected, he said I don't recommend that young families go into politics.  It's just too hard.  And I thought well that's fine, but shouldn't we have people with families in politics?  I think it's important."

Cullen says he and his wife still haven't figured out how they'll use their travel points...but it won't be an easy decision.

"Well, one is your kids live on a plane right?  And that's bad because you don't want that.  It costs a lot of money.  But at the same time, if that's the best chance you have of being around them and helping your spouse raise them, right?  You know it shouldn't be that the spouses of all politicians become single parents."

Playing with his dogs Oreo and Dooley at home in Toronto, Kevin Gaudet says that's exactly why he turned down the opportunity to run for office in 1997.

Gaudet is the executive director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Now, the taxpayers' federation can usually be counted on to decry any perceived perks for politicians. But Gaudet admits to feeling conflicted on this issue.

"We're happy to light our hair on fire when there's obvious crazy waste.  When you look at a billion dollars for security for a gabfest at G8-G20 for example, it seems a little bit different than someone who's trying to undertake best efforts to keep his family together and was following the rules that were put in place.  And we will light our hair on fire often enough when it comes to crazy government spending as I think most people are aware.  Every now and then you trip over an issue that's just perhaps not as clear cut as you would like it to be."

That said, Gaudet says transparency would go a long way to alleviating the cyclical freak-outs Canadians have every time they learn about another aspect of MPs' salaries, pensions, per diems, housing allowances and travel budgets.

And he has an idea how to do it.

"If you put together a citizens' assembly, in effect put people like you would off of a jury pool, except in this case it would be a voter's list. And you get them together in a room and you give them the appropriate information that they seek.  They could decide amongst themselves as a voter pool/citizen's assembly, what the pay perks and pensions should be for their elected officials."

Gaudet says it's been done at the municipal level and voters have been surprisingly reasonable, once they get all the facts.

As Glen Pearson's cab approaches the airport, he says any cuts to MPs' domestic travel budgets for them or their families would probably have severe consequences.

"We had a breakfast this morning about child and maternal health and the health minister came, Leona Agluqqak, and she said it's seven o'clock in the morning and I'm a little bleary-eyed but I've got a one year-old child at home, right?  How does she do it in politics?  Like, I think it's remarkable that someone could do that.  But if we're going to start changing all these rules, there's no way good women who really know how to not only manage home but could also help us manage parliament better or a ministry, they're not going to be able to do it if we continue to crunch down on people the way that we are."

Pearson says he was in a foreign affairs committee when his Sudanese children witnessed their first snowfall.

And while he accepts that he'll probably miss even more milestones, Pearson doesn't think anyone should make it harder for MPs to serve the public as well as their families.  

"What happens for instance, my wife had an issue with my son last year.  It was very difficult.  He had just come fro Sudan and it was just in my five-week stretch of parliament, right?  Well how the hell am I going to handle that on a Saturday and Sunday, right?  He needed a man there because that was the Sudanese way.  He had been phoning his dad and here I wasn't there for him.  Now honestly, does the public honestly think that I shouldn't be a good father at the same time I'm trying to be a good MP?"

(you can listen to the audio version of this story here):