What a dissappointing turn of events. There was actually some hope with the rise of Reform which has now evolved back to the Progressive Conservatives of the 1990’s. Once again, for all appearances, we have two Liberal parties.

I guess there isn’t any limit to their greed …no wonder the world is such a mess .Even in a free country ,they still rip us off like they were doing us a favour..Hope someday they have to answer to their never ending “nothing too good for us attitude ” after all were doing you a service by taking your hard earned tax dollars and spending it !

Shameful. It seems that no matter what party we elect to power, we get a self-serving bunch of socialists wasting our money, taxing us silly, and passing more regulations to control our lives.

Save gas; save the world from warm weather; save your time: when the next election comes along, don’t bother to vote. We are all being played for suckers.

There has to be a stop to this. More money should be given to seniors, to
the health care, to the homeless(not street people). Why should they raise
their wages, because they don’t deserve a raise, they don’t deserve extra money for trips, they can pay out of their own pockets for the small amount of work that they do.

I thought when we got Stephen Harper elected this kind of “feeding at the trough” would stop. I am sending Stephen an email regarding this.

About the travel budget for Parliament

I may agree with you that accountability is lacking, but I would rather they travel and see other parts of the world on our money than being bribed to go by other sources with agendas to push.

Some of our legislators could do with some travel to broaden their narrow oultooks, but I don’t like going to places that pay you to come. That gives a slanted outlook that could be damaging to Canada.

For example, I would like some Senators or MP’s to go to Darfur, but not at the invitation of the government of Sudan!

It is soooo discouraging to being made aware yet again of another example of spending of our tax dollars without accountability, so of course we assume it to be wasteful spending. These people, regardless of their political stripe, just don’t get the message. And I find it particularly disappointing we get no better from the so-called Conservatives - I had expected refreshing changes from the ‘new’ government in many ways - I’m so naive: I keep getting suckered by the talk expecting the walk.

What a bunch of greedy, self serving scoundrels - and the bunch includes members from all parties. The feeling of entitlement at taxpayers’ expense seems to be infectious and manages to defeat election promises every time. It’s sickening.
PJM

Just another reason why I am seriously pursuing setting up plans to have all my unused RRSP funds assigned directly to designated charities to avoid giving estate taxes to be spent in this way!

Your complaint on spending 1.2 million on junkets is commendable yet you remain silent on the over $ 1 billion dollars Health Canada has spent in the war on tobacco in the past five years. Most of the money has disappeared down an unaccountable sink-hole of anti-tobacco NGO and “charitable” organizations.
Why do you remainn silent on this spending scandal?

Accountability!! What is this worth today when it comes to our politicians. There is an air of expectancy with our elected provincial and federal politicians that has to be explained to us, joe or josephine taxpayer!! I do not believe all poiticians expect this but how do we make the accountable??

Glen

Until the majority of Canadians start to show some kind of permanent concern level and actually do something to stop this, don’t expect those in politics who are quilty of wasting taxpayers dollars, to be too worried about what they are doing. After all, this has been going on for a long time and the public by and large seem indifferent to it all. The public should be outraged but this never seems to happen.

I’m of two minds. being a decent politicians is a full time, very demanding job. Some perqs. are in order. The cliche is that if you ‘pay peanuts you’ll get a bunch of monkeys’…which to some extent we have. On the other hand, if we are not vigilant, they’ll try to run away with all they can get as evidenced by the Liberal ADscam.

I have a similar position to Vic in that travel is part of the job. Even though most people complain that MPs and Senators are well paid compared to the average person (even Jack Layton and Olivia Chow who claim to speak for Joe six-pack) these MPs generally could be much better off in private business. These MPs are motivated more by the power of being an MP rather than more money so I am not going to quibble about a trip or two by each MP. We as a country belong to all these international organizations and we have to be represented at them by the elected representatives. I am much more concerned about the level of taxation in this country by the three levels of government. I live is a city where the Mayor is complaining to all levels of government that we need a stable source of funding for infrastructure (Roads, sewers, bridges, trains but mostly roads) he would add more municipal taxes if he could. Our provincial government (Alberta) is under tremendous pressure to spend every petrodollar that comes in the till. The federal government is the only level that has reduced our tax load in the past year and not by much. Every dollar that is removed prematurely from the economy and used to support a non-productive person (government employee or contractor) makes it more difficult for those in the system to carry the load. The government has taxed us to heavily and there are so many people depending on tax dollars that it is difficult for governments to reduce taxes. That is my concern and not the trickle of perks to underpaid MPs. The over-taxation of the middle class is so ingrained that people actually believe that if we are taxed less we will receive less service. Sure a bit of the slush fund goes to trips but more goes to buying off whole groups of the population that the current government perceives to have voting power such as the province of Quebec. Compared to the equalization payment made to Quebec in the last budget the travel funds are rather miniscule. Let’s pick our fight wisely and not lose credibility by bringing up problem that few other people see as a problem.

Spending other people’s money is an internatonal sport with dedicated participants all over the globe. Canadian politians being no exception.
I was hoping that the Conservitves would at least make a good effort to demand that the taxpayer gets value for money.Sadly that does not seem to be a high priority. I guess there that trying to do this will not result in a lot of approving votes. There are too many other activities that buys votes.

There are two sides to the question of MP’s travel. It is true that some travel broadens the mind and help judgement on internationa affairs, but I am becoming really concerned, like many others, that M.P’s, including Conservative M.P’s, are acting as if they are “entilted to their entitlemnts” & going on unnecessary “junkets” at taxpayers’ expense. I thought that a Conservative Government was going to put a stop to this culture of feeding a the public trough, but sadly it is still going on. It is about time the Canadian public woke up.

Regards,

Robert J. Brown

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