The man who oversees the spending of British Columbia's provincial politicians is not privy to the details of their office budgets. Nor does he know how much they pay for travel inside the province.
"When someone asks me how much an MLA spent on travel, I say: 'Go ask the MLA'," legislative comptroller Dan Arbic said this week.
The members of British Columbia's legislature are allotted $119,000 each year to maintain their constituency offices. They do not need to explain where that money was spent. And they may travel within B.C. for any "reasonable and justifiable" reason without publicly disclosing their expenses.
All of which could change - and quickly.
The tidal wave of public anger over the veiled nature of political expenses that began in Newfoundland four years ago gained momentum as it rolled through Ottawa this spring, and British Columbia politicians can see it heading their way.
Mike de Jong, the House Leader for B.C.'s Liberal government, said this week that he would welcome a new era of transparency in which the public can see where every tax dollar has been spent.
"The conversation is taking place nationally," Mr. de Jong said. But, more importantly, he added, "there's just no reason not to do it. It's really just common sense."
When federal Auditor General Sheila Fraser asked to look at the way the House of Commons spends its money - an investigation that would require her to examine the books of MPs - the MPs said no.
Two weeks later, public outcry persuaded them to soften that position, and federal parties are scrambling to find a way out of a situation that has painted them as secretive and underhanded.
Anger over political expenses is intensified when the public perceives, rightly or wrongly, that tax money has lined political pockets - or paid for perquisites to which most people are not entitled.
In Newfoundland, four members of the provincial legislature and a bureaucrat have been sent to jail over the past three years for their part in a scandal that involved more than a million dollars in excessive expenditure claims.
And in Nova Scotia this month, the provincial auditor turned the files of four former politicians and one sitting member of the legislature over to the RCMP for criminal investigation.
Like the Nova Scotia auditor, B.C.'s auditor-general can go through MLAs' expenses. But there is no public disclosure, and documents listing the expenditures are not accessible through Freedom of Information laws.
That is unacceptable, said Mr. de Jong.
"All of the money that's spent around here, whether it's [by]ministers, ministries or MLAs, it's all taxpayers' money. So it is entirely reasonable that the taxpayers would want to have access to information about the funds that are paid to MLAs," he said.
The information should be put online, said Mr. de Jong.
"People are fair and reasonable," he said. "They understand that an MLA who lives 1,500 miles away in the north of the province is going to have higher travel costs than an MLA who lives four blocks from the legislature. They get that."
Mike Farnworth, the House Leader for the British Columbia NDP, said he agrees that more openness would be a good thing. Information about MLAs' travel expenses used to be reported publicly, but that ended about three years ago, said Mr. Farnworth. "I don't know why we stopped doing it."
Kevin Gaudet, the federal director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said every elected official at every level of government is obligated to do two things: publicly report every penny they spend of taxpayers' money and allow auditors general to inspect their books.
Some politicians say they fear that transparency will invite the media to jump on them over little things, much like the response to the revelation in 2006 that David Dingwall, a former president of the Royal Canadian Mint, had billed the public $1.29 for a pack of gum.
To that, Mr. Gaudet says: Don't expense packs of gum.
"That's the point, isn't it?" he asked. "Everybody has a natural intuition that they are probably not allowed to expense a pack of gum back to their company. And they don't think that elected officials ought to be able to do it either. So if those things are embarrassing to political officials, it's only because they are doing the wrong things."
With a report from Justine Hunter in Victoria