During his 10 years on Parliament Hill, Pierre Pettigrew drew admiring stares for his elegant suits and swooping salt-and-pepper coiffure. But the Liberal politician didn’t just look like a million bucks. He also earned a million bucks. Actually, he did even better than that. As a cabinet minister between 1996 and 2006, he collected paycheques totalling more than $1.5 million.

Even after he lost his seat in the 2006 election, the money kept flowing in. Like all fired MPs, Pettigrew qualified for a severance package, estimated to be worth $49,000 by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation. And that was just the down payment on a plush future. Three months after leaving Parliament, he celebrated his 55th birthday and could start collecting a parliamentary pension worth $76,000 a year. While it’s difficult to put an exact dollar figure on Pettigrew’s pension, it’s roughly equivalent to what a person of similar age could buy in the form of an annuity for $1.6-million.

Pettigrew’s total take from a decade in public service? Between salary, pension and benefits, the equivalent of at least $3 million.

He did absolutely nothing wrong to get that money. From all accounts, Pettigrew was hard-working, competent and scrupulously honest. He merely collected the standard pay and perks that our federal leaders have voted for themselves.

He serves as an example of what a politician can earn from a parliamentary career of reasonable, but not marathon, length. The total payoff, it turns out, is in the millions.

Surprised? Few Canadians know how well-paid our politicians are. There is a good reason for that ignorance: no one in power has a vested interest in publicizing how much they take home. Unlike politicians in the U.S. or Britain, our elected officials don’t have to publicize details of their expense accounts. Unlike U.S. senators or congressional representatives, they aren’t required to publicly disclose their approximate net worth or their sources of income. In researching this article, MoneySense asked Stephen Harper, Michael Ignatieff and Jack Layton to provide us with a breakdown of how much they’re worth. Each of them declined.

Trying to research politicians’ compensation through official sources is time consuming. We spent weeks sorting through government documents to comprehend the various components of an MP’s compensation. The list begins with a six-figure salary, of course. Then there are expense accounts and a myriad of perks, such as free trips all over the world. Finally, there is the pension, a largely ignored payoff that can be worth seven figures by itself.

No matter how you add up this grab bag of goodies, it’s clear that our leaders in Ottawa have done a lot better over the past few years than the average taxpayer has. A decade ago our politicians earned salaries that were much in line with what middle-class workers take home. They now enjoy compensation packages that few of us can match. To get a sense of the widening gap between your wallet and Stephen Harper’s, join us as we take a guided tour into the personal finances of our highest elected officials.