It has been some time since Canada has experienced an expenses scandal quite as colourful as the one that has ensnared two top officials of British Columbia’s legislative assembly.

The alleged abuses of the public dime by the province’s Sergeant-at-Arms, Gary Lenz, and its Clerk of the House, Craig James, appear to be both brazen and flat-out bizarre. Many of them – foreign trips of dubious necessity, involving business-class flights and luxury hotel stays and visits to high-end tailors; the allegation of a truckload of alcohol leaving the legislature – would be enough to capture the public imagination in and of themselves. If none of those are vivid enough, there is the claim that the legislative assembly spent more than $13,000 on a wood-splitter and accompanying trailer, which was supposedly purchased in case trees fell on the grounds of the B.C. Parliament buildings, but in practice was allegedly chopping firewood at Mr. James’s home.

The manner in which these accusations have come to light is scarcely less peculiar. In November, Mr. Lenz and Mr. James were marched out of the legislature – under police escort, with little explanation of what they had done wrong – at the order of Speaker Darryl Plecas. Now, Mr. Plecas has produced a jaw-dropping 76-page document laying out their alleged transgressions – many of which he says he observed through his own sleuthing, including while himself participating in some of the foreign trips and shopping sprees in question. For their part, Mr. Lenz and Mr. James not only dispute the allegations but complain that they were not given a chance to respond to them before Mr. Plecas released his report.

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It’s tempting to laugh at all this, in part because the stakes are low, with no serious bearing on the province’s finances.

But it’s dangerous to overlook the potential consequence of this sort of story: further erosion of faith in political figures and public institutions, at a time when that faith is already low. It’s also important to put the allegations in context, rather than adopting the easy narrative of this just being the latest example in a long history of high-off-the-hog excess, and feeding the perception that all Canadian public officials routinely behave in the manner these ones allegedly did, and just haven’t been caught.

Not so long ago, much of what is alleged by Mr. Plecas would have been fairly commonplace. No, not the wood-splitter; that would be strange in any era. But government-issued credit cards went a long way toward personal comfort without much fear of accountability – reflected, for instance, in capital cities' preponderance of high-end restaurants reliant on the exploitation of government expense accounts.

That era ended in the 1990s and early 2000s, as a combination of high-profile expense scandals and shifting mores led governments to impose new expenditure rules and disclosure requirements. Those rules are stricter in some places than others: B.C. still offers a relatively generous $61 per diem to MLAs while they are in Victoria. But there as elsewhere, they now accrue expenses knowing they will be publicly reported online. With few exceptions, elected representatives and public-sector employees are actually more austere – avoiding pricier meals or paying out of pocket, travelling economy, never expensing alcohol – than people at equivalent levels of the private sector.

That is a very welcome shift, and it’s largely gone unnoticed. The exceptions to the new rules are what stand out. Federally, scandals around the expenses of Mike Duffy and other senators earlier this decade gave the impression that Ottawa pols are feverish with a culture of entitlement. Now, British Columbians could reasonably get the impression it’s a similar story at their legislature.

What Mr. Plecas’s report points toward is the need to identify and close accountability gaps, such as the ones that seemingly existed with B.C.'s legislative officials relative to most others working in the same building. It remains to be seen whether his allegations against Mr. Lenz and Mr. James hold up. An RCMP investigation and an audit commissioned by the legislature’s management committee may provide clarity. At the least, there must surely be a better and more transparent system available to track those officials' expenses, rather than leaving it to the Speaker to conduct what sounds by his account to be rogue surveillance.

In the meantime, it’s best to remember that the reason we haven’t seen a story like this in a while is that the alleged behaviour is mercifully less common than it used to be.