The Waste Watch - Government waste federal and provincial

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Postby styky » 01/ 03/ 11 9:38 pm

Growing Defence Department struggling to house staff: Documents


By Mohammed Adam, Postmedia News January 3, 2011

OTTAWA — The federal government paid nearly $30 million in rent last year for thousands of National Defence employees housed in crowded and often dilapidated buildings across the national capital as the department struggles to cope with exponential growth and the demands of safety and security, documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen show.

The rental bill would have hit $90 million if public buildings for which the department pays no rent, but which are assigned rental value by Public Works, were included.

According to the documents obtained from Public Works and Government Services Canada, the Defence Department's ever-increasing demand for office space is fuelled by massive growth in the number of employees, whose numbers increased by 31 per cent between 2005 and 2008, and are still rising.

The documents show that the number of Defence Department employees in the capital region, which stands at 16,200, is projected to increase to 19,800 by 2013, yet many of the department's buildings are either overcrowded or fail to meet health and safety standards. One building is described as "dangerously close to failing."

Another document warns of the risk of "unplanned building failures" rising "dramatically" if replacements are not found quickly enough. It is this urgent need for action that culminated in the recent $208-million purchase of the Nortel campus for the department.

"This government has continued to support and foster the growth of the military at home and abroad; this has brought growth to the department to the extent that it is now distributed across 48 locations in the national capital area, resulting in inefficiencies, delays in program and project implementation," one document says.


Read more: http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/Growi ... z1A23XWWzo
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Postby styky » 01/ 14/ 11 9:36 am

Bid rigging alleged against Ottawa-based consultancy
DANIEL LEBLANC
OTTAWA— From Thursday's Globe and Mail
Published Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011 8:50PM EST
Last updated Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2011 8:51PM EST
One of the federal government’s biggest suppliers of real-estate consultants and experts engaged in bid rigging to keep a near monopoly on the lucrative work, the Competition Bureau alleges in new court documents.

From 2004 to 2007, an Ottawa-based consultancy called the Corporate Research Group (CRG) got $31.8-million worth of work from Public Works and Government Services Canada, or almost all of the department’s real-estate business.

When the tenders came up for renewal in 2007, the department decided to split the work among three companies to foster competition in the industry. The winner of the bidding process would receive 50 per cent of the work and the second-place company 30 per cent, with the remaining 20 per cent for the third-place bidder.

Court documents obtained by The Globe and Mail say that the Corporate Research Group initially lobbied the government to stick to the old practice, in which the winner of the competition had the right to claim all of the business. When that didn’t work, according to a search warrant the Competition Bureau executed last month, the company and one of its consultants collaborated on a plan that would effectively get 80 per cent of a $5.25-million financial analysis contract.

In an investigation, the Competition Bureau analyzed distinct bids submitted by the Corporate Research Group and a firm called First Porter, owned by long-time CRG senior consultant Louis Facchini.

The tables of contents in the two bids were the same, many parts of the documents were identical and both contained some of the same grammatical mistakes and other elements that led investigators to conclude the same people worked on both bids, the warrant said.

For example, the CRG bid correctly pointed out that the company had 15 years of experience in the consultancy business. However, the document said, First Porter also claimed to have 15 years of experience, even though the company was created in 2001.

“I believe that CRG and Louis Facchini intended to circumvent the new distribution model in order to obtain a greater share of the work than otherwise available under the 50 per cent-30 per cent-20 per cent distribution model,” lead Competition Bureau investigator Daniel Ikonomow said in the search warrant.

CRG officials have not responded to requests for comment. <a href=http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/bid-rigging-alleged-against-ottawa-based-consultancy/article1868013/>keep reading</a>
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Postby styky » 03/ 21/ 11 9:13 pm

Taiwan and Israel destinations of choice for junketing MPs, especially Tories

By: The Canadian Press
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/canada ... 95689.html
Posted: 03/21/2011 5:04 PM | Comments: 0 | Last Modified: 03/21/2011 5:42 PM


OTTAWA - Taiwan and Israel were the all-expenses-paid destinations of choice for MPs again last year, according to a parliamentary report on sponsored travel for 2010.

And Conservative MPs were the most likely to take these junkets paid for by foreign governments, advocacy groups and business organizations.

According to the annual sponsored travel report from the conflict of interest and ethics commissioner's office, MPs took 20 free trips to Taiwan, often with spouses, worth a total declared value of more than $133,500.

Fifteen of the 20 Taiwanese trips went to Conservatives, Liberals took three and the NDP and Bloc Quebecois one each.

The trips, including airfare, hotel, and sometimes gifts, were all paid for by the Chinese International Economic Co-operation Association, a business and trade lobby organization.

Taiwan has topped the list of sponsored MP trip destinations for several years running.

Israel was the second most popular destination, with 10 trips in 2010, including seven by Tories. The Canada-Israel Committee was credited with paying some $90,500 for the tours by MPs and their spouses.

Turkey and Paris each logged eight sponsored junkets each, with Conservatives taking four of the Turkish trips and the NDP two. Liberals availed themselves of four sponsored trips to Paris, the Conservatives three and the New Democrats one, shutting out the Bloc from the fashionable French capital.

MPs took seven trips in 2010 to the world's burgeoning economic giant, China, with Liberals scooping up six and the Conservatives just one — a $14,000 trip by Tory MP Gord Brown to Hong Kong paid for by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office.

Liberal MP Jim Karygiannis alone accounted for three of the seven MP trips to China, sponsored by three different groups for a total subsidy of $10,500. The Toronto-area MP also took two other sponsored trips in 2010, to Nigeria and Haiti, making him the most often sponsored traveller in the House of Commons.

In all, 68 different MPs took a total of 96 sponsored trips in 2010.
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Postby styky » 03/ 24/ 11 7:08 pm

Interesting. The above story only garnered one comment in three days at the G&M. Apparently we're alright with MP's flying the globe on our dime.
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Postby styky » 05/ 18/ 11 5:20 pm

Canada could save about $1.3B a year if it had Ont. generic drug pricing: study
The Canadian Press - Anne-Marie Tobin -
TORONTO — If all the other provinces followed Ontario's model for pricing of generic drugs, Canada could save almost $1.3 billion a year, says a team of researchers at the University of British Columbia.

Michael Law and colleagues at the university's Centre for Health Services and Policy Research examined savings after Ontario introduced changes last summer to the way it paid for generic drugs.

Ontario cut the amount reimbursed to pharmacies for generics by 50 per cent, and saved between $181 million and $194 million in the second half of 2010, they found.

"The policy was really controversial and so we wanted to see as a consequence not only how much Ontario saved as a result but how much other provinces could save if they were to have done the same change," Law, an assistant professor at UBC, said Wednesday from Vancouver.

"It's about five per cent of total spending on prescription drugs," Law said of the $1.3-billion figure, noting this is about equivalent to spending for all cancer drugs in Canada in a year.

more - http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadi ... Id=6889474
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Postby styky » 05/ 19/ 11 3:35 pm

Opposition demands Liberals kill bonuses given to eHealth Ontario staff

By Keith Leslie, The Canadian Press –

TORONTO — The Liberal government should rescind bonuses and merit pay given to hundreds of bureaucrats at scandal-plagued eHealth Ontario, the province's opposition parties demanded Wednesday.

The electronic health records agency is giving staff 1.9 per cent merit raises and bonuses of 7.8 per cent, despite the government's two-year wage freeze for about one million public sector workers.

"How can Premier McGuinty justify handing out merit pay and bonuses of up to 10 per cent to the bureaucrats who brought us the billion-dollar eHealth boondoggle?" said Progressive Conservative Leader Tim Hudak. "You should stand on your feet and say it’s wrong and you’re going to rescind these bonuses and merit pay to the eHealth bureaucrats that brought us this scandal."

David Caplan was forced to resign as health minister in 2009 after eHealth spent $1 billion trying to develop electronic health records but had very little to show for all the money. <a href=http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jIcBEOAl9RyK-OevoPSotMZAwKOg?docId=6884704>continued</a>
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Postby styky » 06/ 04/ 11 12:24 pm

Rex Murphy: A bumper crop of bureaucratic stupidity

Rex Murphy Jun 4, 2011 – 8:30 AM ET | Last Updated: Jun 3, 2011 5:49 PM ET
The follies of government are legion and defy a full enumeration.

I recall the effort in my own province of Newfoundland during the dim twilight hours of Brian Peckford’s raucous reign, to foster an agricultural renaissance by the introduction of a heavily subsidized cucumber farm. “Farm” may be too strong a term here, as it trails alien concepts such as soil and fertility, properties not much on call for the magical cucumbers of those days in the east Coast town near St. John’s chosen for the experiment. Rock and scrub, and mainly just rock — that’s east-coast Newfoundland.

The poor cucumbers, if memory serves, were to be tormented out of the native rock by great blasts of high-intensity light issuing from huge lamps, and nourished by a kind of hydroponic wizardry that was just too deep for common understanding.

Twenty-seven million dollars went, to use Keats’ fine phrase, in the “mad pursuit” of a (mainly) flavourless green tube. It was, finally, a total bust. Newfoundlanders didn’t take to hydroponics, cucumbers, or Mr. Peckford’s latter day attempts to brand himself as a pickle entrepreneur. What, finally, did all this profit us? Well, we gained the laughter of most of the continent and added one more (self-produced) dreary item to the stockpile of Newfie jokes.

But follies even of this magnitude stand in the shade next to what’s been happening to a corn farmer in Quebec, Martin Reid, in the aftermath of the floods there.

This year’s is not his farm’s first flood. It was flooded in 1993 as well. When the waters overran the farm then, the little fishes (they were carp) that came with the flood waters overswam it, too. And when, after the rains had ceased, he went to pump some of the water off his land — according to a news story, he got hit by the federal Department of Fisheries with an “illegal fishing” charge.

He was fined $1,000 and warned that a “second offence” could get him fined as high as $100,000.

By the lights of the federal fisheries bureaucracy, this “pumping water to save the farm” was deemed a form of fishery. The farmer, and his father, were both charged by the federal department as being “jointly responsible for having caused the death of fish for reasons other than sport fishing.”

Now in this season’s flood, to avoid that threatened $100,000 fine for a “second offence,” he’s had to get a fishing licence to rid himself of the carp that once again are zipping back and forth in the water over his land.

He — these are his orders — must transport them in containers from his property. If any of the precious trespassing carp die during transport, he must bury them.

This act of high madness by the federal bureaucracy has the moral support of the provincial authorities in Quebec, as well. The province’s wildlife minister is quoted as saying: “He was pumping water … The fish passed through the pumps and came out in pieces. The neighbours complained because it was contaminating the environment.” Gaia spare us.

I see these two stories, cucumbers emergent from the stony places of Newfoundland and forcing farmers to buy fishing licences when their farms are awash with flood waters, as parables. They carry a similar moral. There are some things so far exiled from all the known limits of common sense and rational practice, so inhospitable to logic and fairness, that only — only — governments can be responsible for them.

National Post

Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on CBC TV’s The National, and is host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup.
http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/201 ... stupidity/
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Re: The Waste Watch - Government waste federal and provincia

Postby styky » 07/ 23/ 11 10:07 am

Committee spending soars,
fueled by high-flying MPs

Posted on Fri, Jul 22, 2011, 5:54 pm by Elizabeth Thompson

Spending by parliamentary committees soared 22.4 per cent last year, fueled by travel by high-flying MPs, iPolitics has learned.

Parliamentary budget watchdog Kevin Page appears before the Commons government operations and estimates committee Tuesday February 1, 2011. The committee was one of the thriftiest of the Hill in 2010/2011. CP/Adrian Wyld
According to an annual report quietly tabled in the House of Commons this week, parliamentary committees spent $2.5 million in 2010/11 — the highest level of spending in at least five years and a 38.3 per cent jump from spending levels in 2006/07.........http://ipolitics.ca/2011/07/22/committe ... lying-mps/
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Re: The Waste Watch - Government waste federal and provincia

Postby styky » 07/ 23/ 11 10:29 am

Documents show Canadian diplomats kept Kabul embassy bar well stocked
STEVE RENNIE
Ottawa— The Canadian Press
Published Friday, Jul. 22, 2011 5:31AM EDT
Last updated Friday, Jul. 22, 2011 8:20AM EDT
Canada’s diplomatic corps in Kabul did not go thirsty.

Hospitality forms show embassy staff and dignitaries drank plenty of booze while posted to Afghanistan, an Islamic country where imbibing is not just taboo, it’s against the law.

The embassy consumed close to 3,000 bottles of alcoholic beverages from mid-2007 to last November. The tab for the beer, wine and hard liquor was at least $20,000.

The Canadian Press obtained hospitality diaries from the Canadian embassy in Kabul under the Access to Information Act.

The forms give the Foreign Affairs Department the cost of the embassy’s food and drink orders, along with guest lists and descriptions of lunches, dinners and other functions.

It is not clear whether the department provided all the hospitality forms. While there were dozens of forms in 2008 and 2010, there was just a single sheet for all of 2009.

Foreign Affairs also did not provide any forms for all of 2006 and the first half of 2007 – even though they were requested – so the booze bill could actually be much higher................http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nat ... le2106060/
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Re: The Waste Watch - Government waste federal and provincia

Postby styky » 07/ 28/ 11 10:54 pm

Minister maintains silence on department's furniture dump


By Mike De Souza, Postmedia News July 28, 2011 4:03 PM

OTTAWA — Federal Environment Minister Peter Kent maintained his silence Thursday as federal bureaucrats scrambled to answer questions about a decision to spurn recycling at a building in his department and replace several hundred work stations and office furniture with new equipment.

The department spent more than $140,000 to store the equipment for about a year, according to a contractor, before deciding to auction it off and buy new furniture for a Gatineau, Que. building that was under renovations.

"I think they've been caught here and they don't have an answer," said Liberal natural resources critic David McGuinty, the MP for Ottawa South, in an interview.

In response to revelations by Postmedia News about the government's decision, an Environment Canada spokesman said Wednesday that the department felt it was more "cost-effective" to replace the furniture.

But McGuinty said that Kent's department is blowing an opportunity to save money, green the government's operations and create local jobs.

"If they say it's not cost effective to recycle, they should prove it," McGuinty said. "There are no jobs here in chucking this furniture away and then buying offshore from Pakistan, Malaysia, India or China, or for that matter, the United States."

Kent's office did not respond to requests for comment, while a spokesman in his department indicated that bureaucrats were working on getting answers to questions about their analysis of the costs as well as an explanation about the decision to pay for storage for furniture that it wasn't going to keep.

McGuinty, who wrote to Kent and Public Works Minister Rona Ambrose in July asking them to look into the matter, said the government should also consider expanding its procurement guidelines for new purchases so that it could include more products made from recycled materials. He said by doing so, the government could send an important message with its purchasing power since it spends billions of dollars every year on goods and services.

"There's a real opportunity here," said McGuinty, who received no response from the ministers to his letters. "This is not just about being green. They can save a fortune. This is about being economically and ecologically smart."

When Kent took over the environment portfolio in January, he was told by his bureaucrats in briefing notes that it was important for his department to lead the government in improving its sustainable development policies and practices in response to a series of critical audits, issued between 1997 and 2006, that noted a "lack of central leadership, tracking, co-ordination and followup," on all of the problems that were highlighted.

Read more: http://www.canada.com/Minister+maintain ... z1TSXYXzLM
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Re: The Waste Watch - Government waste federal and provincia

Postby styky » 07/ 29/ 11 1:17 pm

In looking up the sale of this office furniture and the prices are insanely low.
http://crownassets.pwgsc.gc.ca/mn-eng.cfm#topOfCADC
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Re: The Waste Watch - Government waste federal and provincia

Postby styky » 09/ 23/ 11 1:33 pm

Clarkson taps taxpayers for secretarial help
Bruce Campion-Smith Ottawa Bureau chief
OTTAWA—Former governor general Adrienne Clarkson has billed taxpayers more than $500,000 in administration costs since leaving Rideau Hall, government records show.

The payments, revealed in public accounts documents, are for secretarial help.

Clarkson’s office defends the spending, saying that as “Canada’s most active and involved governor general” she is still flooded with mail and requests related to her time as the Queen’s representative in Canada.

But NDP MP Pat Martin called the funding “ridiculous” and said it should stop.

“She was fairly compensated for her services rendered. The Canadian taxpayer shouldn’t be on the hook for her subsequent expenses,” Martin said in an interview.

“I don’t see any justification for a continued obligation after the governor general leaves office, other than a pension....................http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/poli ... arial-help
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Re: The Waste Watch - Government waste federal and provincia

Postby styky » 10/ 09/ 11 4:48 pm

Upkeep for vacant embassy costs Ottawa over $1M

Postmedia News Oct 7, 2011 – 4:10 PM ET

By Thandi Fletcher

OTTAWA — Once a mecca of activity on the coveted doorstep of Parliament Hill, the abandoned former U.S. Embassy building on Wellington Street has gathered more than a decade’s worth of dust and cobwebs at a taxpayer cost of more than $1-million over the past six years.

Documents obtained by Postmedia News using access to information legislation reveal the Conservative government, since coming into power, has spent more than $1.1-million on the upkeep of the deteriorating structure, now essentially a vacant warehouse.

The biggest expense — $556,207 spent between 2006 and 2011 — was for operations, maintenance and minor repairs.

Another $204,539 was spent on other repair projects, $65,012 on roads, grounds and security, $2,792 on cleaning and $272,321 on utilities in the same time period, while electricity costs averaged almost $53,639 per year.

When told of the costs, New Democrat MP Paul Dewar said he was shocked to see how much the federal government has spent “just to keep an empty building going.”

“It’s outlandish when you think of the history of this place,” said Dewar of the prime piece of real estate. “It’s not an abandoned building by design, it’s an abandoned building by decision.”

Built in 1931, the Beaux-Arts style three-storey mansion, with its intricate classical details carved out of limestone, was designed by prominent American architect Cass Gilbert.

The building was well maintained throughout its operational life, and still retained many of its original architectural elements when the last of the U.S. Embassy workers moved to their new, larger office on Sussex Drive in 1999.

As ideas on how to use the space were tossed about, then-prime minister Jean Chretien approved in 2001 a proposal to spend $22-million on transforming the historic building into a portrait gallery.

The planned renovations would create galleries to display the National Archives’ massive collection of paintings and photographs of people who have played a role in Canada’s history, from Canada’s first prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald to hockey legend Wayne Gretzky.

However, when Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative party came to power in 2006, the embassy renovations were quickly axed.

At that point, $11.4-million had already been spent — $6.5-million by the Department of Public Works and $4.9-million by Library and Archives Canada — on the portrait gallery plans, according to 2007 internal documents provided by Dewar’s office.

The Conservatives instead organized a competition inviting private developers from across the country to submit bids to have the portrait gallery built in their city, but the bidding process was cancelled about a week before the expected announcement of a winning city.

The competition was cancelled because “because none of the proposals met the government’s requirements,” according to an email from the Department of Canadian Heritage.

Almost $2-million was spent on the ill-fated competition, according to Dewar’s office.

In 2009, the Harper government reportedly looked into using the building as a reception space for dignitaries, but nothing came of that idea, either.

Today, although tall wooden barricades block off the street level view of the building, signs of wear and tear are visible on the its facade. The left doorknob on the double-door entrance is broken off, and graffiti has been drawn into a layer of dust and grime that has accumulated over many years of vacancy.

In any other nation’s capital, Dewar said, such a historically significant building in such a prestigious location would never be allowed to sit vacant. Dewar said he often fields questions from visitors about the building and what it is used for.

“It’s becoming a bit of an embarrassment,” said Dewar. “If you go to other nation capitals, be it Washington, London, Paris, and in the areas around their legislative buildings, this would be a no-brainer to have a portrait gallery and a building of this kind of prominence.

“It just kind of shows Canadians and the world a lack of any kind of caring and vision for the capital.”

While he doesn’t object to spending money on maintaining the building, Liberal Public Works critic and MP John McCallum said it’s high time the Conservative government decided what the building will be used for.

“What’s the point of having an empty building there, costing taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars to maintain, and not do anything with it?” he asked. “Nobody sees it, nobody goes inside it. I think five plus years is ample time to act. It’s overdue.”

Gregory Thomas, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said a decision on the building’s function is long overdue.

“Keeping it vacant and keeping the lights on at a cost of $220,000 a year makes very little sense,” said Thomas. “Only the Government of Canada would keep an empty building around and pay $1.1 million to keep it empty. It’s crazy.”

In an email on Friday, Public Works and Government Services Canada wrote the department “is exploring options for future use of the building located at 100 Wellington.”

For now, the building “is a classified heritage building and requires regular maintenance and repairs to mitigate health and safety risks and to ensure its preservation,” the email said.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2011/10/07 ... a-over-1m/
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Re: The Waste Watch - Government waste federal and provincia

Postby styky » 11/ 14/ 11 1:30 pm

That's right folks $750,000 for a one room ice shack with a little heater. ](*,)




New chalets to warm up canal skaters
Friday, 11 November 2011
By Peter McCartney PDF Print E-mail
Skating on the Rideau Canal is a long-time tradition for many Ottawa residents, but there’ll be a new sight to see this winter on the world-famous skateway.

Seven new chalets will arrive on the canal Nov. 14 to be installed before the temperatures regularly drop below zero, replacing the old buildings that have lined the ice since the early 1970s.

The new chalets will continue to be used as a comfortable space for lacing up skates, for warming up during cold winter days and nights on the canal, and as a meeting place for friends, families, school groups and others.

“We believe that (the chalets) will not only offer increased functionality and access, but they’ll enhance the skating experience of the one million people who yearly enjoy this UNESCO World Heritage Site,” says National Capital Commission spokesperson Jasmine Leduc.

The new chalets cost $5.24 million – $750,000 a piece – and were paid for through the federal government’s infrastructure stimulus fund.

The NCC announced in January 2010 that it would be replacing the old, increasingly rickety structures due to challenges presented by their installation each year.

“These structures are transported by crane in November when they’re installed,” says Leduc. “More and more there was a risk that the structures were not going to be able to stay together.”

She also says the old structures presented a challenge for people with mobility issues, and that the new chalets will be universally accessible with entrance ramps and benches out front, which should encourage more people with disabilities to use the canal.

Arley McNeney, spokesperson for the Ottawa-based Canadian Wheelchair Sports Association, applauds the upgrade.................http://centretownnewsonline.ca/index.ph ... &Itemid=99
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Re: The Waste Watch - Government waste federal and provincia

Postby styky » 11/ 27/ 11 2:36 pm

Liberals the top five spending senators in 2011


By Robert Hiltz, Postmedia News November 25, 2011

OTTAWA — Two Liberal senators are at the top of the spending list in the upper chamber for the first half of 2011 — and most of the cost is because of travel.

According to Senate spending reports, Senators Vivienne Poy and Terry Mercer each spent over $90,000 on travel between March and August this year — more than triple the average of about $30,000 per senator.

Mercer, a Nova Scotia senator, said he tries to keep his costs down as much as possible, but his Senate duties can make that difficult.

"I do travel a fair amount, I'm a fairly busy senator. I go back to my constituency quite often, almost every weekend. That's a lot of travel in itself," Mercer said. "I have two committees that I'm involved in and I try to keep up with the things that are going on in the industries that they represent."

Mercer sits on the Transport and Communications and Agriculture and Forestry committees. He said he tires to attend as many conferences as he can to ensure that he is well informed for committee meetings. As well, he said, whenever possible he tries to attend meetings in Nova Scotia when he is there on weekends.

A spokesman for Senator James Cowan, the Liberal leader in the Senate, said there are strict rules governing travel for members of the upper house as long as the travel is related to either their constituency or other senate business — similar to the rules of the House of Commons.

MPs frequently travel to their home ridings on the weekends.

Overall, Poy and Mercer spent just over $170,000 for their office and staff, living expenses, hospitality and travel. Rounding out the top five spenders in the red chamber are three more Liberal senators, Nick Sibbetson, Charlie Watt and James Cowan.

The top five spent between about $150,000 and $170,000, while the average total spending in the Senate was $94,000.

At the bottom of the spending list, of senators who still hold a seat, are Conservative Josee Vernier — appointed in June — Liberal Paul Massicotte and Tory Larry Smith. (Smith is a special case because he left the Senate when the spring election was called, but was re-appointed May 2 — 23 days after the election, when he failed to win a seat.)

Vernier and Massicotte both spent less than $20,000 to run their offices — about $9,500 and $11,300 respectively. Massicotte also spent the least on travel, $1,001, in the red chamber.

Marjory LeBreton, the Government Leader in the Senate, is one of the lowest spenders, according to the Senate documents. However, as a member of cabinet, she receives additional resources to run her office, results that aren't printed quarterly.

According to last year's Public Accounts, the government accounting documents, LeBreton spent just over $580,000 in her role as a cabinet minister in 2010-2011.

Poy could not be reached for comment Friday.

rhiltz@postmedia.com

twitter.com/robert_hiltz

Factbox:

Top five spenders:

- (Liberal) Vivienne Poy — $173,511.87

- (Liberal) Terry Mercer — $172,356.81

- (Liberal) Nick Sibbeston — $159,208.72

- (Liberal) Charlie Watt — $149,786.75

- (Liberal Senate leader) James Cowan — $149,486.20

- Average — $94,658.76

Top five travellers:

- (Liberal) Vivienne Poy — $95,383.86

- (Liberal) Terry Mercer — $91,242.10

- (Liberal) Nick Sibbeston — $79,944.47

- (Conservative) Bert Brown — $79,320.52

- (Liberal) Charlie Watt — $69,950.67

- Average — $29,097.15

Read more: http://www.canada.com/Liberals+five+spe ... z1evx41KV8
Click here for FREEDOMINION FORUM RULES
All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope ~ Sir Winston Churchill
"The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other peoples money." Margaret Thatcher They say it takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, a day to love them, but then an entire life to forget them.
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