Transport minister hid travel expenses: documents
Updated Wed. May. 9 2007 3:24 PM ET
Canadian Press
OTTAWA -- Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon made regular use of an executive government jet last year while keeping the trips off his travel expenses, documents show.
He's the second Conservative minister this week to have his travel habits exposed using government documents obtained by the NDP through an Access to Information request.
It's an embarrassing lapse of transparency for a government in the midst of trumpeting new accountability legislation in the Commons.
Transport Canada's aircraft flight log shows at least six trips taken by Cannon in 2006 aboard a sleek Citation C-550 executive jet that do not appear anywhere in his posted ministerial expenses, as mandated by the federal Treasury Board.
Cannon's officials claimed Wednesday that the flights did not come out of the minister's budget, therefore he was not required to post the travel under the government policy of "proactive disclosure.''
"(Treasury Board) guidelines do not require the minister to divulge the cost of its travel if the travel is not paid by his budget,'' press secretary Natalie Sarafian said in an e-mail.
But rules posted by Treasury Board concerning proactive disclosure make no such distinction.
Sarafian detailed how all the undisclosed travel involved ministerial business.
Transport Department officials could not immediately say how much it costs the department to operate the Citation C-550s, but Defence documents show the executive Challenger jets cost about $9,000 an hour.
The minority Tories rode to power last year on a platform of instilling transparency and accountability in government, but may be finding this easier said than done.
"If they are spending money in legitimate, appropriate, proper ways, they have nothing to fear from disclosing it,'' said Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba.
"What they have to answer is: if it is appropriate, why are you hiding it?''
Labour Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn appeared non-plussed this week when another NDP access request revealed $150,000 in charter flights last year for which he had not filed expenses.
Like Cannon, Blackburn's explanation was that his travel should be paid for by the department, not counted as a ministerial expense.
The government also falsely claimed Blackburn's air travel was openly posted on the departmental website. In fact, the air charter contracts were scattered among hundreds of other departmental contracts, with no names or destinations attached, making the posted information virtually meaningless.
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