Ottawa

You’re not helping, Mr. Szabo

While the auditor general remains delightfully passive aggressive, Liberal Paul Szabo explains that one reason the public can’t have a look at the books is because, well, then we’d know about all the lawsuits we’re paying to fight and settle.

“If they were opened to the auditor general and open to the public, all of a sudden people would jump to conclusions without having all the facts,” he said.

“If you identify the member, or the law firm or all this other stuff, all of a sudden people could say … what’s wrong with this member, this member is getting sued all the time,” he said.

Szabo said a large chunk of the board’s budget is used to pay for legal costs because MPs are “very susceptible” to lawsuits and “our reputations can be ruined if it would ever get out.”

The Sun bureau, meanwhile, has apparently set out (scroll down) to interrogate every MP they come across, with predictably awkward results.

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