Senate Travel Bill

Canada's 105 senators amassed a travel tab worth $1.6 million for a three-month period last fall, with Saskatchewan's Pamela Wallin leading the pack with more than $32,000 in "discretionary" travel expenses. During the fall period, which was from September through November of 2010, the Senate sat for 22 days. While senators can spend thousands of dollars flying between Ottawa and their home constituency, they are also given funds for so-called "discretionary" travel, which can be used for speaking engagements, meetings and other appointments outside their constituency.

The Senate's top five discretionary travel spenders were:

• Conservative Pamela Wallin at $32,597.56

• Liberal Jim Munson at $30,585.68

• Liberal Nick Sibbeston at $26,237

• Liberal Vivienne Poy at $24,247

• Liberal Art Eggleton at $22,601

Wallin released a statement on Thursday that attributed her costs to committee work. "I do a lot of speaking across the country as a senator and Chair of the Senate Defence committee. We must pay for this travel if (a) request is made of us in our role as Senator." She also noted that her costs were higher due to bookings errors. "Secondly, during this time period some airline double-bookings were mistakenly made for me. These are being rectified. I trust that when the next quarterly report comes out, it will accurately reflect the actual travel I did, and not contain charges for double bookings on flights."

Sen. Jim Munson, second on the discretionary travel list, said that the senators themselves brought forward the expenses in an effort to be transparent. "We initiated these disclosures," he told CTV's Power Play on Thursday. He added that his tab is due to the large amount of time he spends travelling the country to meet with disabled advocates, including his work with the Special Olympics. "This is a big country, you go from coast to coast," he said, adding: "If I spend $30,000, I make no apologies for that."

Still, Kevin Gaudet from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation said that public trust around political expenses has been all but fatigued by scandals in Canada and elsewhere. In one high-profile case, Quebec senator Raymond Lavinge still spends $10,000 each month in expenses, despite being banned from the Upper House since 2007 as he faces fraud charges. Gaudet noted that there is a "negative cloud" over how politicians spend taxpayer money; something that isn't helped by a lack of clarity and transparency about the costs. In fact, Gaudet said the raw expense numbers do little to illuminate the issue, since they don't reveal where, why, how or with whom the senators travel.