Dick Harris, MP (House of Commons)
The recent call of the federal election means nearly 60 Canadian Members of Parliament are retiring and most will be cashing in on generous pensions, largely paid for by Canadian taxpayers.
Other than former cabinet ministers, few will make out better than Osoyoos-based MP Dick Harris, 70, who will collect close to $120,000 a year for the rest of his life.
“Dick who?” you may ask.
The outgoing Conservative MP for Cariboo—Prince George has owned a home near the Osoyoos Golf Club for more than a decade. He’s lived in Osoyoos when away from Ottawa in recent years with his wife Anne Phillips and he plans to retire here.
In 2014-15, this low-profile MP topped the spending list among British Columbia MPs, claiming more than half a million dollars in expenses – the second highest for an MP in Canada.
Curiously, Harris’s travel claims show he has often claimed trips between Ottawa and Osoyoos or Ottawa and Kelowna as travel to and from his constituency, even though his actual riding is about 800 km north of here.
Harris claimed more than $120,000 in travel expenses for Phillips and himself for the fiscal year that ended on March 31.
The Osoyoos Times made repeated contact with his offices in Ottawa and Prince George offering Harris a chance to explain his spending record.
He did not, however, return calls.
Harris was one of 52 Reform Party MPs first elected in 1993, swearing they would not take part in the “gold-plated” MP pension plan.
Only three of those MPs – former leader Preston Manning, Lee Morrison and Werner Schmidt – kept that pledge. The others all quietly opted back into the plan.
Aaron Wudrick, federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, thinks it’s hypocritical for an MP to score political points by rejecting the pension and then to cash in.
“You can’t rail against a very gold-plated pension and then take one yourself,” said Wudrick. “Given the choice to opt out, I think that is problematic.”
The amount that MPs receive for their pensions is largely based on the number of years they have served. MPs must serve at least six years to be eligible.
Two other retiring area MPs will also be receiving pensions.
Alex Atamanenko, the NDP MP for B.C. Southern Interior, and the MP who actually represented Osoyoos, was first elected in 2006 and will collect just under $50,000 a year.
Colin Mayes, the Conservative MP for Okanagan-Shuswap, also first elected in 2006, will get a pension similar to Atamanenko’s.
Harris, who has been among the top spending MPs most years, incurs extra costs because of the size of his northern B.C. riding and its distance from Ottawa.
“Certainly we understand that the folks who live in British Columbia or the north are going to have a much larger travel bill than an MP from the Ottawa or Toronto areas, for example,” said Wudrick.
But the $505,257 Harris spent during the fiscal year ending March 31 is still considerably more than neighbouring NDP MP Nathan Cullen, whose more remote Skeena-Bulkley Valley constituency is almost four times the size of Harris’s. Cullen spent $452,469.
While Canada’s highest spender, Alberta MP Chris Warkentin ($519,775) is also a Conservative, MP spending doesn’t necessarily follow party lines.
The five lowest-spending B.C. MPs are also Conservative – including area MPs Dan Albas (Okanagan-Coquihalla), David Wilks (Kootenay-Columbia) and Ron Cannan (Kelowna-Lake Country)
Albas, spending just $371,518, was the second lowest spender among MPs in the province.
Atamanenko, spending $441,536, is around the middle of the pack.
By far the largest expense most MPs pay from these expenditures is salaries for staff in their Ottawa and constituency offices.
Harris spent $283,609 on employee salaries, slightly higher than other B.C. MPs we looked at. Atamanenko spent $259,951 to staff full-time offices in Castlegar and Ottawa and a part-time office in Oliver.
Wilks, the Conservative in Kootenay-Columbia, spent a paltry $180,957 on salaries, an amount that leaves Atamanenko baffled.
“To be honest with you, I don’t know how he does it, but he’s obviously doing it,” Atamanenko said of his Conservative neighbour. “I just know that with the complement of staff I have, we’re sometimes going full bore and people are coming in and they have concerns. We’ve got all this casework and they’re busy.”
Atamanenko added the NDP is the only caucus that pays staff at a union rate based on a collective agreement and seniority.
Some MPs, he said, dismiss their staff during the summer.
After employee salaries, travel is the next biggest expense, and it’s here that Harris’s spending far exceeds that of other MPs.
Harris spent $65,711 in taxpayers’ money on his own travel and $56,103 for his wife for a total of $121,814.
While there are regular flights to Prince George through Calgary or Vancouver, Harris usually flew to Kelowna when he claimed to be travelling to his constituency. Kelowna is about 140 km from Osoyoos and 680 km from Prince George.
On a number of trips that he claimed as “to travel to/from constituency and Ottawa,” his travel report shows he in fact travelled to Osoyoos, with no evidence that he actually visited his constituency 800 km to the north.
By contrast, Atamanenko spent $60,865 on his own travel and $10,979 for his wife Ann.
Atamanenko has some sympathy for MPs who bring their spouses with them on trips between Ottawa and the constituency.
“The reason they have this provision for spousal travel is to keep the family together,” he said. “If the spouse goes back and forth every week with the MP, it may look like a lot, but in a sense it’s part of the cost of doing business, to keep us together and to make sure the family stays together.”
Wudrick accepts this argument to a degree, but questions why spouses need to travel business class.
“Some argue they’re away from home a lot, so this helps to keep families together, but the flipside of that is do they need to fly business class?” Wudrick said. “We think that’s a stretch. Maybe a reasonable amount for travel for spouses is reasonable, but business class, I think that’s perhaps excessive for a spouse of a Member of Parliament.”
The House of Commons uses a point system for MP travel, which is intended to put all MPs on an equal footing whether their constituencies are close to Ottawa or in the far north.
MPs get 64 points a year for travel to and from their constituencies, with each return trip representing one point. They can use these themselves or apply them to their “designated traveller,” usually a spouse, to dependents and employees.
They may use up to 25 of these points as “special points” for trips in Canada to places other than their constituencies.
At first, Harris and his wife claimed their trips to Osoyoos and Kelowna as “special points,” in accordance with the rules.
But when they came close to exhausting their limit, they began claiming these trips as “regular points,” intended only for travel between Ottawa and the constituency.
Asked about the appropriateness of using regular points for travel to a home outside the MP’s constituency, Kenzie Potter, chief of staff to House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer, pointed to the Members’ Allowances and Services Manual.
“Regular travel points are to be used to travel between Ottawa and a Member’s constituency,” she said.
Wudrick also takes issue with Harris’s use of regular points to travel to his home in Osoyoos.
“If the rule that says you travel between your riding and Ottawa really means your home and Ottawa, and you want to use that between Osoyoos and Ottawa rather than the riding, I think that’s fair,” he said. “But he can’t do both.”
Only seven of Harris’s travel claims for the entire year list Prince George as a destination or starting point.
Although these trips do not include dates, these would include the annual golf tournament the avid golfer MP holds in Prince George to raise money for Special Olympics.
By contrast, 12 of his trips included Osoyoos, Kelowna or both as destinations or starting points.
In his farewell address in the House of Commons on June 18, Harris paid tribute to his adopted home.
“I head to Osoyoos, B.C., where the snow never falls, the sun always shines, and the golf season is 10 months long,” he concluded.
RICHARD McGUIRE
Osoyoos Times
