Prince George-Cariboo Conservative Todd Doherty was the highest spending MP during the first three quarters of the 2018-19 fiscal year according to a report.
His total for this period came to a whopping $466,700 dollars, 54-thousand more than Prince George-Peace River-Northern Rockies MP Bob Zimmer.
Doherty says there was a lot more travel involved, which led to increased expenses.
“I did a lot of work on our fisheries file, which saw a number of trips out to Newfoundland on fisheries issues particularly the clam scam issue where the former Minister of Fisheries was involved in providing a lucrative surf clam quota.”
“He provided that to his family and the family of a sitting Liberal MP and that would have contributed to some of this.”
The Prince George-Cariboo representative put on the frequent flyer miles over the past little while, which made the expenses climb a lot higher than he wanted.
“Air travel is expensive. We do look to take advantage of travel passes whenever we can to alleviate some of the costs but then the added costs would have been when we were working on our fisheries files as well as the Asia-Pacific Gateway.”
Doherty says his group is not proud to be on the top of this list.
“It’s something that were always cognizant of as this is taxpayers dollars were spending and as I said, earlier on, I am one of the most competitive guys there is but I am not proud to be on the top of this list.”
He also hired two Co-Op Students last year for various initiatives, something Doherty is not taking part in this time around.
Skeena-Bulkley Valley NDP MP Nathan Cullen spent the least out of the three northern politicians at 351-thousand dollars.
Here is a link to the expense report.