MP pulls back expense curtain
OTTAWA – Michelle Simson learned a simple lesson as assistant branch manager at a Scarborough bank: when handling other people's money, account for every penny spent. Her grandfather had instilled a similar message of responsibility in her father, and her father passed it on to her. So it was quite a surprise when Simson arrived in Ottawa after last fall's election to find that this thinking would cast her as a renegade on Parliament Hill. The Liberal MP for Scarborough Southwest joins a club of one this week when she becomes the first federal politician to post on her website all of the expenses that she claimed for the 2008-09 fiscal year. There is about $95,000 to set up and run an office for five months, 75 per cent of what she was entitled to use; a negligible amount to wine and dine officials and constituents; and close to the maximum of about $25,000 that MPs are granted to rent and maintain a second home in Ottawa. Disclosing the claims is the simplest of actions. It could easily have gone unnoticed in the sleepy summer months. But in choosing to reveal how she has spent taxpayers' money since the October federal election, she is bucking a trend of secrecy that crosses party lines and is fiercely guarded. "I have been a taxpayer a lot longer than I ever have been an MP, and as a taxpayer this was a real bone of contention," she told the Star. "It in fact goes back to my father and my grandfather. It was all about accountability."
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