Taxpayers Foot Elected Senator's $331,000 Expense Bill

In which we learn that the best way to pick up frequent flyer miles is to become a senator from Western Canada.

If this is any indication of what we can expect if the Tories follow through with their plans for an elected Senate, maybe we ought to just trash the whole chamber: Bert Brown, the only "elected" senator in Canada, charged taxpayers some $331,000 for just one year's worth of expenses. Brown spent $180,000 on travel expenses and $151,000 on expenses for staff, research, and other things. Brown was elected by residents of Alberta to be a senator-in-waiting until Stephen Harper appointed him to the Red Chamber in 2007. While the senator has yet to explain the tab, one of the reasons that it's so high could be because he's the only senator with a constituency office back home, to which he apparently travels frequently. Very, very frequently. Likewise, the second most expensive senator was Nick Sibbetson of the Northwest Territories, who rang up $321,000 in expenses, $175,000 of which was for travel. All told, the Senate charged taxpayers $20.4 million for research, staff, and travel expenses. One observer speculated that if more senators were elected, we'd see their travel budgets explode because they'd have to travel, like Brown, back and forth from their home provinces far more often. Meanwhile the House of Commons hit us up for $32 million in travel expenses alone. We guess that's one of the problems of trying to run a government in a massive, sparsely populated country with exorbitantly priced airfares.