For the most part, politicians are creatures that desire to be seen as infallible, making mea culpas and explanations necessary only when stood on the plank at the behest of one’s own colleagues (remember David McGuinty?).

Premier Allison Redford’s sister – Lynn Redford – has been caught in an ethical conundrum of unambiguous clarity. Caught red-handed spending taxpayers’ money on Progressive Conservative events and fundraisers, Lynn Redford has a couple steps that she must take on her own. First, she should repay every dollar she shipped towards the PCs, including salary she was paid while organizing and attending Tory events. Second, she should apologize and explain how this could happen. 

Lynn Redford’s ethical lapses are not the fault of the Premier, but how it is dealt with reflects strongly on the Premier and her government. Family or not, the Premier needs to condemn her sister’s actions.

Siphoning taxpayers’ money into political parties is clearly illegal, even if Lynn Redford and those who signed off on the dirty money claim ignorance of the law. Even if one is ignorant of the law, it shouldn’t take Confucius to figure out that what transpired was plainly and self-evidently unethical.  

Lynn Redford’s expenses are not the only ones that have come under scrutiny however. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) filed Freedom of Information (FOI) requests for the Premier’s own expenses in September. Knowing that the CTF was reaching for them, the Premier got out ahead of potential controversy and released them herself in early October, sort of.

What the Premier released did not include her trip to the Olympics and lacked swaths of details and charge explanations. The premier’s office told the CTF that the matter was now closed. The CTF continued to press and was able to extract a few more details, like the Premier’s $12,500 plane ticket to London and a $7,000 hotel bill. Significant portions of information were still redacted or left out entirely and her office has, as of this time, not provided any more details or explanations.

Earlier this fall, the CTF met with cabinet minister Don Scott and recommend that the government proactively post all expenses of ministers, MLAs and senior staff online with receipts. Quite commendably, the government listened and adopted many of our recommendations. 

Since this time however, the government have been less than forthcoming with information on past expenses, as evidenced by the Premier’s unwillingness to play ball with the FOI request.

Add to this the 21 other FOI requests the CTF has filled for the past expenses of cabinet ministers, every single one of which to date has been rejected. The ministers are able to reject the FOI request by agreeing to speed up the public release of their past expenses.

This should be excellent news.

However, since the government has thus far refused to provide all of the information requested about the premier’s expenses, it leaves one rightfully questioning whether they will release all of the information requested for the ministers’ expenses?

The Redford government deserves credit for responding to the concerns of taxpayers after a summer of expenses scandals and agreeing to a nation-leading expense disclosure policy. However, they need to come clean on their past expenses and they need to demand answers from Lynn Redford, even if they might not like what they hear.