At last- our members of parliament in Ottawa have found something they can agree on.
Unfortunately, their sudden ability to see eye to eye provides no benefit to the country.
A news stiry coming out of Ottawa in mid February told of a closed door meeting of Ottawa MP’s, geared towards looking for ways to curb MP spending.
Government Whip Gordon O’Connor called the meeting in which spending curbs of five to 10 per cent across the board – including Old Age Security – in MP budgets were sought.
What better way to get all federal parties to agree on something?
“The opposition never agrees with the government on almost any policy until it comes to their own perks and privileges,” said CTV’s Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife.
“A lot of them are upset. They don’t want to have fewer flights (from 64 to 52), they don’t want to lose their business class flights, they don’t want to see cuts to their office budgets, and surprise, surprise, the opposition parties agree with them,” Fife added.
Cry us a river.
Parliament is the only federal department that doesn’t publically post its expenditures. There has long been a demand for more accountability for Parliamentary spending, and we believe there is no better time to do this than now, while everyone else’s spending is under the microscope.
If there is a reason why parliamentarians should be given a free pass from reality, we’d like to hear it.
Barring that, any movement to stand in the way of honest attempts to ground our MP’s with respect to the economic realities of the day should be seen as nothing less than pork barrelling and the practice of elitist politics.
Much like our parliamentarians, it is an issue that all Canadians will have no trouble finding common ground on – but for the exact opposite reasons by which it unites our MPs.
