Ontario Ombudsman Andre Marin, shown at a news conference in Toronto, Tuesday, Feb.26, 2008.Colin Perkel
The cloud of suspicion around public spending does not end with recalcitrant MPs, as the case of André Marin, the Ombudsman of Ontario, shows. Legislators across Canada need to accept the transparency provided by the likes of Sheila Fraser, the Auditor General, but should also insist that the people they themselves supervise - officers of the legislature - are held to a high account when it comes to the expenditure of public dollars.
Mr. Marin seeks the renewal of his term, but has been tripped up by an inconvenient penchant for charging apparently private expenses - personal grooming products, a $2,000 television set for his home office - to the public purse.
In the annals of government spending, the amounts are a pittance. But as Ombudsman, Mr. Marin has a special duty. He is "Ontario's Watchdog," charged with protecting the public in its relationship to government. Mr. Marin has exposed misuses of government power, pointing out shortfalls in the province's property-assessment and career-colleges systems that harmed citizens or allowed a private few to benefit.
Yet Mr. Marin misused the powers of his own office, with little accountability at all, essentially approving many of his own expenses. His moral authority as the public's crusader and protector has been compromised. Despite his protestations that they were legitimate expenditures, Mr. Marin should repay the cost of the television and other clearly personal items.
But the roots of Mr. Marin's personal political problem have a broader reach. There were no proper legislative controls to stop his inappropriate expensing. Across the country, many other officers of the legislature - the privacy commissioners, chief electoral officers or auditors-general who report directly to MPs or legislative assemblies, not to the government - find their spending subject to little scrutiny.
So here is a chance for legislators to show leadership. They can act as true stewards and take their duties to oversee parliamentary officers seriously. In Ontario, they will want to consider whether Mr. Marin's actions makes him unfit for another term. But they should do so as members in their own right, and not allow themselves to be whipped by a party vote that would compromise their own independent oversight and could give credence to Mr. Marin's complaints that there is a witch hunt against him.
Second, they can extend the legislation and regulation around expensing - online publication, tight controls on reimbursements for personal items - that they have required of cabinet ministers and government officials in recent years: to themselves, yes, but also to the officers of the legislature or of Parliament who report to them.
The public rightly demands transparency and frugality in spending by public officials. Legislative officers perform a critical guardianship function for the public. But these guardians also need to be watched, and legislators must step up to that task.