Last December, a secretive Parliamentary committee known as the Board of Internal Economy voted to give all 338 MPs a 20% increase in their office budgets. The total cost to taxpayers: a cool $25 million.

Oddly enough, even though the decision was made in December, news of the Board’s decision didn’t seep out publicly until late February, on a Friday afternoon right before Parliament shut down for a week. Doesn’t exactly scream “transparency,” does it?

Twenty-five million dollars might not sound like a lot in a budget of billions, but when rookie Finance Minister Bill Morneau brings down his first budget on March 22, Canadians will be bracing for a massive deficit – with some speculation it could be triple the size of the Liberals own self-imposed “modest” limit of $10 billion. With so much red ink, MPs helping themselves to a 20% boost to their own staff, travel and other expense budgets is sure to have more than a few Canadians also seeing red.

After all, if MPs feel they have such a strong case for this new money, why didn’t they just come out and make it? Keeping the decision secret, only to leak it out two months later right before the weekend smacks of a classic attempt to bury controversial news and hope that no one notices. A more transparent approach would have been to announce the decision at the time it was made – and justify it to a skeptical public.

No doubt many MPs will argue they spend their existing office budgets prudently, and need the extra money to better serve their constituents. That’s possible – but there’s currently no way for Canadians to judge that claim since we know little about how MPs spend their budgets.

Until 2009 MP office budgets were not even publicly broken down beyond broad categories such as “Travel” or “Other Expenses.” By 2014, more detail was provided – including itemized costs for hospitality expenses. But details for many big expenses are still vague. For example, what about some MP spending $1,000 in the “Gifts” category? What kind of gifts? We can’t say. A few thousand spent on “materials and supplies?” Again, Canadians are left in the dark.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation has proposed an easy solution to all of this: simply have all MPs (and Senators for that matter) post scanned receipts of their expenses online. It’s a system already in place for councillors in Toronto and for senior politicians and civil servants in Alberta – and since MPs already have to submit scanned receipts to administrators in Parliament, there would be little red tape. With a few clicks of a button, those scanned documents could easily be put on the internet for all Canadians to see.

If politicians know every receipt they submit will be available for the whole world to see, they are far more likely to be prudent in their use of taxpayer dollars than if they can assure themselves that “nobody will ever know.”

It’s time for our politicians to be more transparent with their spending – and they should start by posting their expense receipts, and show Canadians the money. But until then, Canadians should rightfully question the need for a 20% hike to their office budgets.