Tag

transparency

6 articles

LegislationJuly 10, 20266 min read
MPs Don't Vote Themselves an Annual Raise. A Formula Does It. Here's How MP Pay, Pensions, and Office Budgets Actually Work.
Members of Parliament are paid under a framework set out in the Parliament of Canada Act. The foundation is the sessional indemnity — the base salary every MP receives regardless of party or seniority, which passed roughly the $200,000 mark in the mid-2020s (the exact current figure is published by the House of Commons). MPs who hold additional roles receive additional salaries on top: the Prime Minister receives an additional amount equal to the base (roughly doubling it), ministers receive an additional salary under the Salaries Act, and the Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition, House leaders, whips, parliamentary secretaries, and committee chairs each receive smaller supplements scaled to the role. Raises are not voted on annually: the Act adjusts salaries automatically every April 1, indexed to the average increase in base-rate wages from major private-sector union settlements — an index published by the federal government — though Parliament can and occasionally has legislated freezes. Since a 2001 reform eliminated the old tax-free expense allowance, the salary is fully taxable. The pension, governed by the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, vests after six years of pensionable service and accrues at 3 per cent per year of service to a maximum of 75 per cent; reforms passed in 2012 raised members' contribution rates toward equal cost-sharing and moved the age for an unreduced pension to 65 for service after 2015. Separately from all of this, each MP receives an office budget set by the Board of Internal Economy — money for staff, constituency offices, and travel that is publicly disclosed quarterly and is not personal pay.
LegislationJuly 9, 20266 min read
Lobbying Ottawa Is Legal. It's Also Supposed to Leave a Paper Trail. Here's How the Registry of Lobbyists Works — and What It Misses.
Federal lobbying in Canada is governed by the Lobbying Act, which starts from the premise that lobbying is a legitimate activity — and that the public is entitled to know who is doing it. The Act requires paid lobbyists to register in the Registry of Lobbyists, a free, searchable public database administered by the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying. Consultant lobbyists — people paid by clients to lobby — must register each engagement. In-house lobbyists — employees of corporations and organizations — are registered by their employer's most senior paid officer once lobbying makes up a significant part of employees' duties, a threshold the Commissioner has long interpreted as roughly 20 per cent. On top of registration, lobbyists must file monthly communication reports disclosing oral, arranged communications with designated public office holders (DPOHs) — ministers, their staff, senior public servants, and, since 2010, MPs and senators — naming the official, the date, and the subject matter. Former DPOHs face a five-year ban on lobbying after leaving office. The Commissioner of Lobbying, an independent Agent of Parliament, administers the registry, enforces the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct, investigates suspected breaches, and reports findings to Parliament — but cannot levy fines, and suspected offences under the Act must be referred to police. The registry is one of the most useful accountability tools in Ottawa, but it has structural blind spots: unpaid advocacy, lobbying below the in-house threshold, and most written or informal contact never appear in the monthly reports — and the registry records that a meeting happened, never what was said.
LegislationJuly 8, 20267 min read
For $5, You Can Make the Federal Government Hand Over Its Records. Here's How Access to Information Actually Works — and Where It Breaks Down.
The federal access-to-information regime — usually called ATIP, for Access to Information and Privacy — rests on two statutes. The Access to Information Act gives Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and individuals and corporations present in Canada a right to records under the control of federal government institutions, for a $5 application fee. The Privacy Act runs in parallel and covers requests for your own personal information, at no charge. The right of access is the rule, but it is qualified by exemptions and exclusions: cabinet confidences are excluded from the Act entirely for twenty years under section 69, and institutions routinely invoke exemptions for advice and recommendations to ministers (section 21), personal information, third-party business information, law-enforcement and security matters, and solicitor-client privilege. Institutions must respond within 30 days but may extend that deadline — with no fixed statutory cap — for large volumes or consultations, and long extensions and missed deadlines are the system's most persistent and best-documented failure. A missed deadline is a deemed refusal, which the requester can take to the Information Commissioner of Canada, an independent officer who investigates complaints and, since 2019, can issue binding orders for the release of records — orders the government can contest only by going to Federal Court. Journalists use the system to surface documents governments would not volunteer; the largest share of request volume, however, comes from people seeking their own files, especially immigration files.
LegislationMay 22, 20267 min read
Bill C-22 Lets the Public Safety Minister Order a Telecom to Build Surveillance Tools. The Telecom Cannot Tell You. Here Is How That Works.
Bill C-22 contains a provision that civil-liberties advocates from Meta, Apple, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and academic privacy law have uniformly flagged as the bill's most aggressive feature: the Public Safety Minister's power to issue "capability orders" to electronic service providers. Under Part 2 of the bill (the Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act, SAAIA), the Minister can require a provider to build a specific surveillance capability into their service, maintain it, and not disclose its existence. The provider must comply. The provider is legally prohibited from disclosing that the order exists. The Intelligence Commissioner reviews the Minister's reasonableness on a case-by-case basis. There is no statutory requirement of public reporting — even aggregate. This article walks through how the order is issued, what the provider is and is not allowed to say, how the Intelligence Commissioner's review works in practice, and what amendments could restore public accountability.
AccountabilityMay 21, 20268 min read
Bill C-22 Is at Committee. Here Are the MPs Who Put It There — And How to Reach Them.
On April 20, 2026, the House of Commons passed Bill C-22 (Lawful Access Act, 2026) at second reading. The bill is now at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU), which is the last realistic stage for substantive amendments. This article catalogues the load-bearing Liberal MPs in C-22's path to passage — the bill's sponsor (Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree), three Cabinet members who spoke for the bill at second reading (Justice Minister Sean Fraser, Secretary of State for Combatting Crime Ruby Sahota, Parliamentary Secretary Patricia Lattanzio), the Government House Leader who scheduled the debate (Steven MacKinnon), and the seven Liberal members on SECU led by Chair Jean-Yves Duclos. Each MP's public role on C-22 is described and public-record contact information is included so constituents can reach their representatives. Parliament Audit takes no position on whether the bill should pass; we publish the record and the contact channel.
AccountabilityMay 6, 20266 min read
Liberals Used Their New Majority to Vote a $298M Health Hearing Behind Closed Doors. The Vote Was 6–5.
On April 28, 2026 — the first day the Liberals’ new House majority took effect — two House of Commons standing committees voted to go in camera on motions involving public-interest accountability. At HESA (Health), Liberal Parliamentary Secretary Maggie Chi moved to take the meeting in camera while a Conservative motion to ask the Auditor General to audit PrescribeIT was on the floor. The vote was 6–5: six Liberals YEA, four Conservatives plus one Bloc MP NAY. At ETHI (Ethics), Liberal members made an identical move on a Conservative motion that would have required the Privy Council Office to provide regular updates on the Prime Minister’s ethics screen. The pattern triggered a public defence from Liberal House leader Steven MacKinnon, who pledged "open committees" the next day.

MPs Don't Vote Themselves an Annual Raise. A Formula Does It. Here's How MP Pay, Pensions, and Office Budgets Actually Work.

Members of Parliament are paid under a framework set out in the Parliament of Canada Act. The foundation is the sessional indemnity — the base salary every MP receives regardless of party or seniority, which passed roughly the $200,000 mark in the mid-2020s (the exact current figure is published by the House of Commons). MPs who hold additional roles receive additional salaries on top: the Prime Minister receives an additional amount equal to the base (roughly doubling it), ministers receive an additional salary under the Salaries Act, and the Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition, House leaders, whips, parliamentary secretaries, and committee chairs each receive smaller supplements scaled to the role. Raises are not voted on annually: the Act adjusts salaries automatically every April 1, indexed to the average increase in base-rate wages from major private-sector union settlements — an index published by the federal government — though Parliament can and occasionally has legislated freezes. Since a 2001 reform eliminated the old tax-free expense allowance, the salary is fully taxable. The pension, governed by the Members of Parliament Retiring Allowances Act, vests after six years of pensionable service and accrues at 3 per cent per year of service to a maximum of 75 per cent; reforms passed in 2012 raised members' contribution rates toward equal cost-sharing and moved the age for an unreduced pension to 65 for service after 2015. Separately from all of this, each MP receives an office budget set by the Board of Internal Economy — money for staff, constituency offices, and travel that is publicly disclosed quarterly and is not personal pay.

Lobbying Ottawa Is Legal. It's Also Supposed to Leave a Paper Trail. Here's How the Registry of Lobbyists Works — and What It Misses.

Federal lobbying in Canada is governed by the Lobbying Act, which starts from the premise that lobbying is a legitimate activity — and that the public is entitled to know who is doing it. The Act requires paid lobbyists to register in the Registry of Lobbyists, a free, searchable public database administered by the Office of the Commissioner of Lobbying. Consultant lobbyists — people paid by clients to lobby — must register each engagement. In-house lobbyists — employees of corporations and organizations — are registered by their employer's most senior paid officer once lobbying makes up a significant part of employees' duties, a threshold the Commissioner has long interpreted as roughly 20 per cent. On top of registration, lobbyists must file monthly communication reports disclosing oral, arranged communications with designated public office holders (DPOHs) — ministers, their staff, senior public servants, and, since 2010, MPs and senators — naming the official, the date, and the subject matter. Former DPOHs face a five-year ban on lobbying after leaving office. The Commissioner of Lobbying, an independent Agent of Parliament, administers the registry, enforces the Lobbyists' Code of Conduct, investigates suspected breaches, and reports findings to Parliament — but cannot levy fines, and suspected offences under the Act must be referred to police. The registry is one of the most useful accountability tools in Ottawa, but it has structural blind spots: unpaid advocacy, lobbying below the in-house threshold, and most written or informal contact never appear in the monthly reports — and the registry records that a meeting happened, never what was said.

For $5, You Can Make the Federal Government Hand Over Its Records. Here's How Access to Information Actually Works — and Where It Breaks Down.

The federal access-to-information regime — usually called ATIP, for Access to Information and Privacy — rests on two statutes. The Access to Information Act gives Canadian citizens, permanent residents, and individuals and corporations present in Canada a right to records under the control of federal government institutions, for a $5 application fee. The Privacy Act runs in parallel and covers requests for your own personal information, at no charge. The right of access is the rule, but it is qualified by exemptions and exclusions: cabinet confidences are excluded from the Act entirely for twenty years under section 69, and institutions routinely invoke exemptions for advice and recommendations to ministers (section 21), personal information, third-party business information, law-enforcement and security matters, and solicitor-client privilege. Institutions must respond within 30 days but may extend that deadline — with no fixed statutory cap — for large volumes or consultations, and long extensions and missed deadlines are the system's most persistent and best-documented failure. A missed deadline is a deemed refusal, which the requester can take to the Information Commissioner of Canada, an independent officer who investigates complaints and, since 2019, can issue binding orders for the release of records — orders the government can contest only by going to Federal Court. Journalists use the system to surface documents governments would not volunteer; the largest share of request volume, however, comes from people seeking their own files, especially immigration files.

Bill C-22 Lets the Public Safety Minister Order a Telecom to Build Surveillance Tools. The Telecom Cannot Tell You. Here Is How That Works.

Bill C-22 contains a provision that civil-liberties advocates from Meta, Apple, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and academic privacy law have uniformly flagged as the bill's most aggressive feature: the Public Safety Minister's power to issue "capability orders" to electronic service providers. Under Part 2 of the bill (the Supporting Authorized Access to Information Act, SAAIA), the Minister can require a provider to build a specific surveillance capability into their service, maintain it, and not disclose its existence. The provider must comply. The provider is legally prohibited from disclosing that the order exists. The Intelligence Commissioner reviews the Minister's reasonableness on a case-by-case basis. There is no statutory requirement of public reporting — even aggregate. This article walks through how the order is issued, what the provider is and is not allowed to say, how the Intelligence Commissioner's review works in practice, and what amendments could restore public accountability.

Bill C-22 Is at Committee. Here Are the MPs Who Put It There — And How to Reach Them.

On April 20, 2026, the House of Commons passed Bill C-22 (Lawful Access Act, 2026) at second reading. The bill is now at the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security (SECU), which is the last realistic stage for substantive amendments. This article catalogues the load-bearing Liberal MPs in C-22's path to passage — the bill's sponsor (Public Safety Minister Gary Anandasangaree), three Cabinet members who spoke for the bill at second reading (Justice Minister Sean Fraser, Secretary of State for Combatting Crime Ruby Sahota, Parliamentary Secretary Patricia Lattanzio), the Government House Leader who scheduled the debate (Steven MacKinnon), and the seven Liberal members on SECU led by Chair Jean-Yves Duclos. Each MP's public role on C-22 is described and public-record contact information is included so constituents can reach their representatives. Parliament Audit takes no position on whether the bill should pass; we publish the record and the contact channel.

Liberals Used Their New Majority to Vote a $298M Health Hearing Behind Closed Doors. The Vote Was 6–5.

On April 28, 2026 — the first day the Liberals’ new House majority took effect — two House of Commons standing committees voted to go in camera on motions involving public-interest accountability. At HESA (Health), Liberal Parliamentary Secretary Maggie Chi moved to take the meeting in camera while a Conservative motion to ask the Auditor General to audit PrescribeIT was on the floor. The vote was 6–5: six Liberals YEA, four Conservatives plus one Bloc MP NAY. At ETHI (Ethics), Liberal members made an identical move on a Conservative motion that would have required the Privy Council Office to provide regular updates on the Prime Minister’s ethics screen. The pattern triggered a public defence from Liberal House leader Steven MacKinnon, who pledged "open committees" the next day.