Government Expense Claims

I am not going to weigh in on too many government related issues, but there is one issue that has been on my mind for some time. It is the issue of the moving expenses paid to Government staffers. This situation brings up a few questions. How is possible to pay $1.1 million to relocate staff members (49), not voted members? How do the rules not apply to staff members? What is going to happen now? 

Let's look into the dollar amount first. The number of $1.1 million seems high. If all 49 staffers mentioned in the CBC article submitted a claim; the average would be more than $22,000 each. CBC reported that 10 ministers did not pay any relocation expense claims. If they each had 1 staffer apply, the total of 39 staffers increases the average to more than $28,000 per person. There was one approved expense claim of over $100,000 to relocate a staffer from Toronto to Ottawa. That is incredible. I wish I could have entered the lowest number above when I relocated for employment.

Let's look at the possible rules for these types of expenses. There are rules for these types of claims. The National Joint Council Relocation Directive outlines the items that can be claimed by voted officials. For the staff positions, these rules don't seem to apply. It is up the cabinet minister which claims get approved. Some cabinet ministers, obviously, thought sticking to some rules was a good thing while others, obviously, did not.

What is going to happen now? I want anyone that works in a professional setting to consider what would happen if they entered a claim that was outrageous. Then consider what would happen if your manager approved it and it went to accounting. There would be a lot more than a tisk tisk, finger wag and then instruction to pay some back. There would be major consequences to activities like this. This might be a case where the government can learn something from private industry.  

Don't get me wrong, I don't think this is a new Liberal government issue and some of the money was returned. I am sure this has been happening for some time. During this whole situation with the Liberals, it was confirmed that a Conservative staffer was reimbursed over $90,000 for relocation. I guess it is easy to make these types of decisions when you are dealing with someone else's money without defined rules. Maybe if your job was on the line, a different total may have been claimed.