I have a question for the Chair of the Standing Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration.

In the summer of 2024, The Globe and Mail published an editorial. The headline was “The Trudeau Senate is not a better Senate.” In that editorial, they note that the Senate had the equivalent of 372 full-time employees in 2017, and as of last year — “last year” being 2023 in this case — it had 493, which is a 32% increase representing 121 more employees. Do you know if these numbers are correct?

The Globe and Mail editorial goes on to indicate that — and this is, again, a quote from the editorial — “What cost taxpayers $813,356 a senator per year a decade ago now costs $1.3-million.”

Could you table in the Senate what the salary cost was for employees in 2017 and what it was in 2023?