MPs report the summary totals of their expenses once a year. You can review the data yourself [PDF] for the most recent year for which information is available – fiscal 2009, also known as the 12-month period ending on March 31, 2009. This is the only document provided by the Board of Internal Economy, the nine-MP committee that meets in secret to supervise the expenditure of more than $500 million a year associated with the operations of the House of Commons and the Library of Parliament.
What I've done take the Member's Expenditure's Report and dumped the data in that PDF into a spreadsheet so that I can present some comparisons and analysis. This is one of several posts with some of those summaries and analyses.
Staff and other expenses:
The annual report notes that this “includes employee salaries, service contracts and constituency office operating expenses such as utilities, telephone service for secondary constituency offices, additional cellular and Personal Digital Assistant (BlackBerry) services in excess of goods and services provided by the House (as well as airtime and data plans), furniture and computer equipment. This item also includes a Miscellaneous Expenditures Account of up to 3% of the Member’s Office Budget for certain hospitality expenses and gifts given for reasons of official protocol.”
Some other notes gleaned from the MP's manual (available only on the Parliamentary intranet and not on the public internet):- MPs cannot claims expenses for gifts with a value greater than $100 or for gift certificates or for gifts to be used for partisan purposes (for example, at a raffle at a party fundraiser)- The maximum salary any one staff member of an MP can earn is about $80,000 a year.
With that preamble, here are the MPs who ranked 1 through 20 as the highest spender in this category for FY2009:
- Charlie Angus (NDP) $295,219 (right)
- Dennis Bevington (NDP) $288,023
- Gerry Byrne (LPC) $287,498
- Rob Anders (CPC) $283,643
- Bryon Wilfert (LPC) $283,061
- Brian Masse (NDP) $281,352
- Jim Abbott (CPC) $280,105
- Gérard Asselin (BQ) $278,008
- Russ Hiebert (CPC) $277,839
- Mauril Bélanger (LPC) $274,704
- Nathan Cullen (NDP) $274,679
- Scott Reid (CPC) $274,660
- Jean Crowder (NDP) $274,404
- Vic Toews (CPC) $274,391
- Jeff Watson (CPC) $273,868
- Rick Casson (CPC) $271,604
- Barry Devolin (CPC) $271,487
- Garry Breitkreuz (CPC) $270,805
- Keith Martin (CPC) $270,786
Here are the MPs who spent the least on Staff and Other Expenses:
- Stephen Harper (CPC) $148,362 (right)
- John Baird (CPC) $168,976
- Massimo Pacetti (LPC) $172,540
- Colin Mayes (CPC) $176,130
- David Anderson (CPC) $178,996
- Yvon Godin (NDP) $194,419
- Peter Van Loan (CPC) $197,399
- André Arthur (IND) $197,804
- Josée Verner (CPC) $200,416
- Kevin Sorenson (CPC) $200,900
- Ed Fast (CPC) $201,365
- Christian Paradis (CPC) $201,780
- Jacques Gourde (CPC) $201,859
- Stéphane Dion (LPC) $202,263
- James Moore (CPC) $204,158
- Deepak Obhrai (CPC) $204,288
- Francis Scarpaleggia (LPC) $205,528
- Jean-Claude D'Amours (LPC) $206,194
- Jim Prentice (CPC) $207,329
- Denis Coderre (LPC) $207,994
Because there was a general election in the middle of this fiscal year, not every MP served for the full fiscal year. Among those that did serve the entire 12 months, the average expenditure on Salary and Other Expenses was: $239,281
Interesting that Charlie Angus is such a big spender when he shares so many resources with his provinicial counterpart Gilles Bisson. They share office space and even phone and fax numbers. Quite often they even travel together to share costs.
Are these costs being billed just to the Government of Ontario, just the the Government of Canada or are they being split?
Mr. Angus does have a very large constituency with many communities only accessible by plane so high travel costs would make sense but according to what is listed above these expenses are not travel related. So how does someone who shares resources with another elected official have such high expenses?