The main reason for this increase is the budget for senators’ living expenses, which are rising due to inflation and the rising cost of housing in the Ottawa area.

Each senator’s living expenses budget for fiscal year 2024-25 will increase from $26,850 to $37,000. Among other things, this increase is intended to take into account the expectation that senators should be present in the National Capital Region for four days instead of three during sitting weeks.

It should also be noted that in 2023-24, an additional living budget of $7,500 was added to the living expenses budget for senators who met certain conditions related to their responsibilities as leader or committee chair or who had travel constraints. Nearly 30 senators received this additional allowance.

Beginning in fiscal year 2024-25, the living expenses budget will be the same for all senators.

The budget for senators’ basic allowances, additional allowances and pensions is increasing by $630,000 to reflect the adjustment in effect since April 1, 2023, as well as the Senate’s contributions to the senators’ pension fund to the tune of 23.34%.

These increases are offset by a $278,000 decrease in employer costs for superannuation, the Canada Pension Plan and employment insurance.

The second part of voted appropriations amounts to $95.5 million — an increase of $6.8 million, or 7.7%, over the previous year.

The main components of the increase in voted appropriations are as follows: new funding requests approved by the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration during the year — representing $6.1 million — mainly due to the ongoing maintenance and renewal of the Senate’s network infrastructure, economic salary increases, the security evaluation program and services to senators, as well as the forty-ninth annual session of the Assemblée parlementaire de la Francophonie and the seventieth annual session of the NATO Parliamentary Association; an increase of $656,000 in the overall budget for senators’ office expenses — from $246,550 to $253,390 — reflecting inflation of 3.9%, and salary increases of 2.7%; an increase of $551,000 for broadcasting; additional funding of $500,000 for information technology services provided by the House of Commons; an increase of $490,000 — or 10% — in the budgets of senior officers, caucuses and recognized parliamentary groups; an increase of $250,000 for the work of Public Services and Procurement Canada, or PSPC, for the maintenance services on specialized equipment used by the Senate; $182,000 for the extension of funding for the Indigenous Youth Internship Program; and a decrease of $2 million related to efficiency opportunities and expired financing.

Initiatives requiring one-time funding will be self-funded up to $1.5 million, an amount set aside for replacing the multimedia components in the committee rooms and in the Senate chamber, as well as for the security assessment program and services to senators.

With regard to the Senate’s staff, the members of the Executive Committee have committed to maintaining a cap of 449 full-time equivalent jobs or FTEs across the institution. Despite the addition of seven new FTEs in 2024-25 for initiatives related to the security of senators and 3.3 new FTEs approved in December because the funding for the Indigenous Youth Internship Program was extended, the Senate Administration has committed to maintaining that cap by finding reductions elsewhere.

In closing, I want to once again thank the members of the subcommittee for their extensive work on developing this budget. I also want to thank the Senate Administration staff and the members of the Executive Committee. They dealt with the estimates in a thoughtful, careful manner.

I also want to thank the Senate Administration, particularly those in the Finance Directorate, who do excellent work and provide us with all of the information on the changes to the budgets.

I therefore recommend that you adopt the report.

Thank you for your attention.

Yes.

Thank you for the question.

This change was brought upon, perhaps, five years ago — so it was five budgets ago. We were always budgeting for 103 senators. For a number of years — since we have been here — you know that there have always been vacancies in the Senate. We have eight vacancies right now. Therefore, there were always surpluses in the budget.

It was decided — I would say it was five years ago or, perhaps, during the pandemic, so it was 2019-20 — to bring the number down to 100 senators. Since the money is there, and it’s not used, it’s just given back to the Treasury Board. It was making the budget much higher than it should be, and the monies that are not used are sent back to the Treasury Board.

As you know, in the past couple of years, there have been increases due to inflation and negotiations for salary increases. Most of the Senate budget is associated with salaries, and most of the increase is from salaries. Then, there are the senators’ living expenses. These have been adjusted this year to bring them to the level of the House of Commons, because the Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration Committee has been dealing with exceptions for a number of senators.

For some senators, the amount provided was around $34,000. We are raising it to $37,000 for everyone. It’s less than what is being provided for members of Parliament. It will give senators the flexibility to stay in Ottawa four nights, because the budgets were initially established for three nights. Now there are sufficient funds for the fourth night, so that the Thursday evening problem that we have been living with for a number of years will no longer be a problem for most senators.

These are some of the expenses — the large increases.

The other one comes from the House of Commons, where there are services that the Senate needs to use, and the increase for these services this year represents about 1% of the Senate’s budget.

Yes.

Thank you for the question. Members of the House of Commons receive a bit more money than we do. I believe their budget is $38,100. We get a bit less. With regard to the amounts allocated to senators or members of the House of Commons, if the money is not spent, then it does not go into the pockets of senators. It goes back to the Treasury Board. In the past, there were limits in the budget for those who stayed in hotels or apartments when that was coming out of their personal funds. We set the budgets to ensure fairness and to eliminate the barriers that caused funding pressure and travel constraints. The unused amounts are not given to senators or members of Parliament.

I could talk about the budget for hours. Will my colleagues grant me five more minutes?

When we look at budgets from 10 years ago, because we’re looking at 10 years now, there have been increases. Over that time, there have been salary and cost increases. If you compare the increases to 10 years ago, the calculation doesn’t stand anymore. We have had increases over the years, and a lot of changes have been brought forward. There are security issues now that we did not have 10 years ago. There are security elements that are part of the budget now that weren’t there before. The number of full-time equivalents, or FTEs, has gone up. There has been more work.

If we go back 10 years, I remember when I got here in 2016, there were only 26 senators who were sworn in during the months of November and December. If you look at a budget when you have 74 or 75 senators, we budgeted on that. Now, 10 years later, we budget for 100 senators, so that we still give as much of the right information to the members of the Senate and the public. The increases have happened everywhere — not only here. If you look at the budgets of every government office, everything has gone up. But we cannot always compare to 10 years ago. We have to look, at least to be fair, at the last two or three years, and then we will get a real sense of the increases and costs that are associated with the work that we do.

I will say two things: First, when looking at efficiencies to reduce costs, we have been working with administration to find areas where we can cut costs. For example, since the pandemic, we have workers who are doing telework, so we don’t need as much office space. We are looking at having common areas for when some of the staff come in for just a few days — or a few hours during a day. Not everyone has an office now.

This is something that is being looked at by the Long Term Vision and Plan, but reducing office space is one part of it.

In the last 10 years, the Senate went from the building on the Hill to become an autonomous building, an autonomous space. So a lot of the expenses that we had before were combined with the House of Commons in one building. Now, they have their building and we have ours. So there are a lot of costs that have been associated with the full-time equivalents, or FTEs, that have gone up because of the fact that we are in a single building now.

I assume that when we go back to being in one building, some of these costs are going to go down considerably. But then again, time will tell. I’m not making any promises here. But these are some of the elements. So now we have other things, such as maintenance of the buildings. We used to share maintenance for one building. Now — when I’m talking about Parliament — we have the Senate that has its own maintenance team, and then you have the House of Commons, which has these expenses also. These are the kinds of changes that have brought costs up and the number of FTEs.

One of the concerns that the Subcommittee on Senate Estimates and Committee Budgets has, and that your leaders and the Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration share, is how we contain and stop growth by finding efficiencies here and there. We have about 35 initiatives that we are looking at. We’re looking at cafeterias, transport, office space and computers. We’re looking at all kinds of things, but broadcasting is another one. Do we want broadcasting? Do we want web casting? How are we going to work around these things? These are all the things we are looking at. The last thing I will add is the cost of cybersecurity now, which has gone up considerably because of the threats that the Senate and any government institution is exposed to. So these are all costs that have brought the budget up.