Liberal Member of Parliament Hedy Fry is the longest-serving female member of Parliament in Canadian history, at 85 years old with 33 years in office.
According to her hospitality expenditures, filed with the Financial Management Office at the House of Commons, the veteran MP charged taxpayers $1,422, supposedly to host a two-person dinner at Granville Island’s Dockside restaurant on Valentine’s Day in 2024.
The filing said the dinner was to “discuss constituency issues with stakeholders.”
The expense was approved and was not questioned until independent journalist Isaac Peltz posted about it on Instagram.
When questioned, Fry’s office said there had been a serious mistake with how this expense was filed and said a former staff member made the error.
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They said the expense was actually for Fry’s annual International Women’s Day brunch, held not on Valentine’s Day, but March 2, 2024, and attended by 30 people.
They supplied photos and an itemized receipt.
The co-founder of the group, Democracy Watch, said how this expense was filed is concerning.
“MPs run their own spending system through the Board of Internal Economy and it is a partisan system of essentially watching themselves,” Duff Conacher said.
“There have been many questions raised about spending that the board has approved in the past.”
Conacher said the fact that this filing went undetected for so long should be a wake-up call.
“The Auditor General should just announce that there will be, from now on, there will be regular, random audits of MPs spending and that would do a lot to clean things up,” he added.
Fry was not available for an interview on Monday.
MPs are not required to post itemized receipts, but her office later provided one for the Women’s Day brunch, showing the spending was not improper.
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