Edmonton’s mayor and city councilors have made strange bedfellows with Canada’s Senate. The mayor and council – like the Senate – refuse to disclose their expenses to the taxpayers who pay the tab. (Image Left Edmonton City Council Chambers - Wikipedia/Right The Canadian Senate)

The ability to keep expenses secret from the public has a way of shielding politicians from scrutiny as to how they are spending our money. Just ask Senators Mac Harb, Patrick Brazeau and Mike Duffy all who ran up five and six figure bills in bogus housing claims, but never expected Joe Public to find out about it. They thought they were accountable only to other politicians and bureaucrats who looked at their expenses, and not the public.

In the fall of 2012, the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF) filed Freedom of Information requests for the expense claims of Mayor Stephen Mandel, four current councilors and one former city councilor. The City responded not by officially denying the information to the CTF, but by levying unreasonable search fees that were clearly designed to discourage investigation of their expenses.

To review the expenses claims of the mayor and these councilors, the city outrageously demanded $11,580. To obtain copies of Mayor Mandel’s expenses alone, the city wanted $4,630.

This was particularly odd considering the exact same Freedom of Information request made to the City of Calgary for the expense claims of its mayor and council cost the CTF – get this – $25 each.

Edmonton City Hall is merely trying to keep potentially embarrassing information out of the newspapers.

Why would they want to do this?

In Nova Scotia, MLAs were caught expensing things like a ‘Dance Dance Revolution’ Xbox video game, and power generators that were kept at their own houses. It is serious stuff, and to date, three MLAs have been criminally convicted and one is still awaiting trial.

In the United Kingdom, MPs in all parties got caught claiming inappropriate expenses, with one MP famously expensing the cleaning of his castle moat to taxpayers.

Here in Alberta, the CTF filed Freedom of Information requests for the expense claims of Premier Redford and most of her cabinet ministers in the fall of 2012. After much arguing back and forth, the provincial government eventually released the information.

Among the many receipts and invoices disclosed, it was found that Tourism Minister Christine Cusanelli had expensed two first-class plane tickets for her mother and daughter to attend the London Olympics with her, among many other questionable expenses. This foul-up cost her job as she was fired from cabinet for the affair, and won the CTF’s provincial Teddy Waste Award.

This expense scandal, as well as the various ones from the past summer (AHS executive Allaudin Merali and former U of C Board Chair, current Senator Doug Black) led to Premier Redford fast-tracking the CTF’s recommendations for an online expense disclosure website. Alberta now has the gold standard for other politicians to follow across Canada.

The whole affair was unfortunate for free-spending politicians, but a prime example of why taxpayers need to have reasonable access to this information.

Premier Redford made clear when she was introducing the new expense disclosure policy that she fully expected municipal governments and government agencies – that get billions of dollars in provincial funding – to follow suit.

Hint, hint, Edmonton City Council.

To date, the City has refused to comply and publicly disclose its expenses.

The Premier chose to lead by example on expense disclosure, but some haven’t followed that example. Edmonton and other non-complying government bodies with significant budgets might need to be compelled by legislation to open their books.

When politicians try to hide information from the public, they all too often have a reason for doing so. But with any luck they won’t be able to hide forever.