
OTTAWA â The Prime Ministerâs Office is taking heat for thousands in questionable lunch expenses, and the opposition parties say a former high-ranking member of Harperâs team wants to make sure other top public servants suffer the same fate.
Former Harper chief of staff Guy Giorno emailed The Huffington Post Canada on Tuesday after we reported that the Prime Ministerâs Office had spent close to $68,000 over three years providing lunches for a weekly meeting with ministerial chiefs of staff â an apparent breach of Treasury Board guidelines. Chiefs make six-figure salaries that top off at $178,800.
Giorno wrote: âAre you going to update your article to include the weekly (Wednesday, I believe) deputy ministersâ breakfasts? 4th floor, Langevin. Every week for as long as anyone can remember.â
It was under Giornoâs leadership that the PMO started expensing the weekly staff lunches in the summer of 2010. The luncheons from Boston Pizza, House of Greek, Indian Express, CafĂŠ Deluxe, Freshiiâs, Southern Cross and El Mazaj averaged between $442 and $659 for 40 people.
Opposition parties seemed genuinely stunned to hear Giorno â who left the PMO in 2011 but was recently tapped to become a legal advisor to the Conservative Party â point the finger at bureaucrats.
NDP ethics critic Charlie Angus told HuffPost that getting caught and âratting out public servants who do the same thingâ is not ethical behaviour.
âItâs like âYou catch me? Well, weâll throw someone under the busâ,â Angus said.
Liberal Treasury Board critic Gerry Byrne said Giorno had not made the problem smaller but âmade it much bigger.â
âIf the deputy ministers are doing this as well, I donât know that that provides an effective cover. Frankly, it means that there may be a sweeping problem in the government about an understanding of the governmentâs own rules and regulations,â he said.
HuffPost attempted to add up the cost of the deputy ministersâ breakfasts over the past six years. Raymond Rivet, a spokesperson for the Privy Council Office, the department which organizes the breakfasts, said the tally for each deputy ministerâs meal was transferred to their department. But figures posted online were either incomplete or missing.
According to the Privy Councilâs website, it spent $7,774.35 on breakfasts for 16 individuals during the same 39-month period as the chiefs of staffâs luncheons. But documents obtained under Access to Information by researcher Ken Rubin, and reported by Sun Media, suggest the costs of the breakfasts over three years could be as high as $66,000.
âWhen the full group of deputy ministers are present, each breakfast bill can be as high as $805.69 as it was on Sept. 21, 2011,â wrote reporter David Akin.
Deputy ministers are top public servants who manage thousands of employees and earn between $190,500 and $449,109 a year.
In an email exchange, Giorno defended the PMO lunches â and the deputy ministersâ breakfasts â saying it was âentirely appropriate to furnish breakfast or lunch when a meeting is scheduled over a meal period.â
âThe policy expressly provides for this,â he added.
The Treasury Board's hospitality policy states that federal employees can only be provided hospitality in situations that "extend beyond normal working hours," where employees are required to work during their normal break and meal periods, where there are no nearby facilities to obtain meals, or where staff dispersal is not efficient. (There are several restaurants and lunch counters near the Prime Minister's Office).
Treasury Board President Tony Clement told the House of Commons Tuesday that âthe rules had not been brokenâ and he suggested routine working staff lunches fell under the guidelines.
In the House of Commons Wednesday, Byrne continued to question the Tories about the meal expenses.
"These $67,000 in lunches are part of the PMO disclosure," Byrne said. "The only person who could have approved them is the Prime Minister himself.
"So to the Prime Minister, what was on today's menu, compliments of the taxpayers?"
Treasury Board President Tony Clement replied by saying the Tories had cut expenses by 48% since they came to power.
"We are going to continue and respect the taxpayer," he said.
When pressed by HuffPost, neither Clement nor the prime ministerâs spokesperson, Jason MacDonald, provided any details about how the meals fell within the guidelines.
Byrne told HuffPost he disagrees with the view that weekly events are âworking lunches.â
"These Conservative staffers are not being held in a budget lock-up, there is not an emergency session," he said, pointing out that the meals are routine occurrences.
âThat is would not be my read of the policy and I am a former member of the Treasury Board [cabinet committee under Liberal prime minister Jean ChrĂŠtien].â
âOn its face, it is pretty clear. [It] does not seem to me that they are keeping within the spirit or the letter of the law,â he said.
Norman Spector, a chief of staff to former prime minister Brian Mulroney, suggested on Twitter that Prime Minister Stephen Harperâs team could have found a cheaper way to meet its staff.
Giorno said it was difficult to find a regular time when so many chiefs of staff could be available. âAs I recall, the lunch period is a time when Cabinet committees do not meet and the House is not sitting⌠Also many Ministers do not require their chiefs' presence over the lunch period, making it a suitable meeting time,â he wrote in an email.
Rivet, the Privy Council spokesperson, explained the deputy ministers' breakfasts are an opportunity for top civil servants to exchange information and discuss current government issues.
Given the confidentially of issues discussed, face-to-face meetings are required, he wrote in an email.
â[Given] the difficulty to gather all deputy ministers in one location on a weekly basis, a breakfast meeting is the most practical option,â he added.
The breakfast meetings have been a tradition for decades, he said.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story incorrectly spelled Ken Rubin's name. This version has been updated.
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