McLeod stick-handles through another one

News that our Members of Parliament have abandoned ship on their attempts to stop Auditor-General Sheila Fraser from looking at their expenses isn’t as surprising as the convoluted reasoning of Conservative house leader Jay Hill. He puts it all down to a campaign of “misinformation.”

What misinformation. All Canadians wanted was transparency in government, specifically in how Members of Parliament spend our money on themselves and on the operation of Parliament.

MP Cathy McLeod, who initially figured there was no good reason for the AG’s involvement, now says our Parliamentarians listened to their constituents. While trying to stay on side with the Conservative party line on this one, she had the good sense to publish a brief summary of her own expenses on her website some time back.

That summary, produced for all MPs by KPMG, doesn’t get at the details of spending the way the AG no doubt will.

McLeod has stick-handled her way through some difficult stuff in her short time as MP — including the fake cheque controversy, the ACC funding battle, and now this. That, people, is the sign of a good politician. Maybe she could give a clinic to the Liberals on how to extricate themselves from the HST.