The day after Auditor General Michael Ferguson made public his audit of misspending in Canada’s Senate, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is calling on Ferguson to launch a similar probe of spending by members of Parliament, saying it is necessary to restore confidence in public institutions.

“It is high time that the auditor general gets involved and looks into the House of Commons,” Trudeau told reporters a day after the damning report singling out several senators for repayment or criminal investigation.

“For a long time, Canadians have had less and less confidence in our institutions,” said Trudeau. “As parliamentarians, we should sit down with the auditor general to learn and adapt the lessons he learned during the examination of the Senate and look at everything that is necessary to restore confidence.”

“Perhaps it is just a question of adapting our procedures,” he added. “Perhaps it is a question of diving into all the past years spending of 308 MPs. We have to be open to what is necessary.”

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair said his party has proposed an audit of MPs spending in the past, only to have it voted down by other parties.

“We’ve not only supported it, we’ve proposed it. We’ve said that in the House of Commons. We have already proposed it, and the other parties voted against it.”

One way to start is to open up the meetings of the secretive Board of Internal Economy which oversees the administration of the House of Commons and deals with allegations of spending problems by MPs.

The auditor general’s report prompted Mulcair to renew his calls for the abolition of the Senate, pointing to its decision Tuesday night to vote for the government’s anti-terrorism bill C-51.

“We know that the Senate has to be abolished. It is scandalous that yesterday on the very day of the Auditor General’s report, they went ahead and adopted without change (C-51) – sober second thought, my eye; there’s nothing sober about the place. There’s no thought.”

The Conservatives also appeared open to the prospect of the auditor general taking a closer look at the way MPs spend their budgets but did not commit to an MP-by-MP audit.

“We support having the auditor general sit down with the Board of Internal Economy and determining a way for him to engage on this,” Conservative Whip John Duncan said in a statement.

Green Party Leader Elizabeth May said she has been calling for an audit of MPs spending since 2010 when former Auditor General Sheila Fraser tried to negotiate access to MPs’ books.

However, she is reconsidering that stand in the light of comments by Ferguson that an audit of each MP’s spending might not be worth it.

“He thinks the lessons learned from the Senate can now be applied to the House.”

May, who posts her own spending on her website, said House of Commons finance officials are also more rigorous about verifying MPs spending than Senate officials have been.

“The rules on the House side are much stricter than what we are reading about of what happened to senators. Some of those travel bills, had they been put in on the House side, I’m confident the finance people in the House of Commons would have rejected them. They do actually review things and look for compliance with the rules.”

“We should have a far more transparent and accountable process on the House side and if we don’t adopt it ourselves, I will continue to call – against the auditor general’s advice – for the auditor general to come in here and look through our books on the House side.”

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