This is interesting all by itself.
NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh is currently topping out as the highest-spending individual member of Parliament in the House of Commons, while Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre ranks as the lowest?
Coincidentally the two “Opposition” leaders outside the Bloc & the vast Green Umbrella Party.
The latest figures on MP expenses
were released in late March, and they show that for the first three quarters of the last fiscal year (April 1, 2023 to Dec. 31, 2023), Singh expensed $533,533 in his capacity as the MP for Burnaby South.
In that same time period, Poilievre claimed $143,201 in expenses related to his role as the MP for riding of Carleton, roughly a fourth of Singh’s total.
Poilievre was also one of only a handful of MPs whose constituency expenses didn’t include a single dollar for “travel” or “hospitality.”
To be sure, both Poilievre and Singh rack up far higher expenses each year in their capacity as party leaders. But in terms of expenses incurred as individual members of Parliament, Singh charged the most, while Poilievre charged the least.
Singh expensed more than $500,000 over nine months to run his constituency office; Poilievre charged $143,201
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It makes sense (but not $385,000.00+ sense) that the two would have wildly different travel expenses, as Singh’s riding is 4,000 kilometres west of Parliament Hill, while Poilievre represents an Ottawa suburb.
Singh, though he was born in Scarborough, Ont., and having previously represented Toronto-area ridings while a member of Ontario’s provincial parliament, opted to run in Burnaby South (a shoe-in Gimmy riding in his case) in the 2019 election and has represented the city near Vancouver since then.
Between July 1 and Sept. 30, his travel expenses of $65,836.58 almost exactly matched those of Lori Idlout ($66,181.59), a perennial high-spender in parliamentary travel due to the simple fact that she represents Nunavut.
Singh’s costs for paying salaries to staffers working in his offices are nearly double those of Poilievre. In the most recent quarter for which there are numbers, Singh had $63,790.64 in salary costs to the $33,808.68 expensed by Poilievre.
In the second quarter (July 1 to Sept. 30), the spread was nearly triple: $94,051.82 to $33,751.19.
Singh expensed more than $500,000 over nine months to run his constituency office; Poilievre charged $143,201
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