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Expense claims have been the undoing of many a politician, and can possibly carry enough weight to help sink a government.

Whether it’s Bev Oda’s orange juice, the expense scandal that sucked in a number of Canadian senators, or Skypalace and the South Africa trip that gave the Redford government an ‘aura of power’, it’s the little things that can do them in.

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Put simply, it’s the notion that politicians shouldn’t be living, or appear to be living, high on the hog on our money.

So it is with this thought in mind that we give the NDP government kudos for showing restraint when it comes to its expense claims.

After putting up a sizable $18.4 million two years ago,the government has scaled back to a comparatively paltry $3.8 million in 2017, which is a $5-million drop from 2016 expenses.

Compared to the $27.6 million spent by the PC government in 2013, the debt-happy NDP are positively thrifty.

One of the many knocks against the Tories, including in these pages, was that the lot of them had grown into a culture of entitlement.