Caution: Highly Contagious

"We probably are going to have to look at the rules. But I mean come on, it's one thing to find a loophole, but there's others about respecting the spirit of (the rule). We all understand the spirit of the rule."
"What's even more outrageous is I have to hear his sanctimony and arrogance day after day about the waste of taxpayers' money, and him going on and on and on about having to account for every nickel, and then we find out he found this loophole. It's a bit rich."
Liberal house leader, John Milloy -- Queen's Park

"Most Ontarians will understandably raise an eyebrow when they hear an MPP who is paid a healthy salary is sending Ontarians a bill for their retirement home."
New Democrat MPP Cindy Forster

"?  ?  ?  ?  ?  Stop!     ?  ?   ?  ?  ?  Stop!   ?  ?  ?  ?  ?   STOP!"
Progressive Conservative Leader, Tim Hudak

The thing of it is, if the big brothers of Canadian parliamentary democracy can see fit to cook themselves a little extra on the side, because it is not, strictly speaking, illegal, simply churlishly immoral, yet highly personally remunerative, then why not the middling-fish at the provincial level? Parliamentarian see, Parliamentarian do.

While the RCMP looks into the questionable expenses through an arcane sense of imperial entitlement practised by former Conservative senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau, along with former Liberal senator Mac Harb, perhaps it's time for the OPP to do likewise at their end.

Something has gone awry with the honour system. The honourable members of parliamentary democracy have taken to behaving as though they reign supreme in a faux parliament like that of say, Afghanistan, where funding comes from some mysterious source called international aid enabling them to pocket whatever they can manage -- and they manage handsomely.

This may be routine in a country renowned for many things, among them the level of graft and corruption -- not so well in Canada. The Member of Provincial Parliament for the Toronto-area riding of Thornhill has a Toronto apartment. But he saw fit last year to claim the maximum $20,719 housing allowance for a house he owns in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Under the rules of the Ontario legislature MPPs can claim that expense as long as their primary residence is over 50 kilometres from Queen's Park where the lawmakers gather to um, make law. When that rule was conceived it obviously hadn't occurred that some day someone might come along to claim the housing allowance under such a patently slender lapse of ethics.

But 65-year-old MPP Peter Shurman obviously thought he could advantage himself nicely by claiming the allowance citing the Niagara-on-the-Lake home (a splendid address of a region settled in the late 18th Century by United Empire Loyalists who built magnificent homes there) in his party's financial documents filed with Elections Canada.

This is called chutzpah from the man whose colleagues must listen as he lectures government in his role as opposition finance critic, about living and spending within its means. Makes sense in a twisted way; government coffers are required to be hale so that hearty perquisite claimants like MPP Peter Shurman can be assured their entitled pay-outs, after all.

Ontario PC Leader Tim Hudak and his finance critic, Peter Shurman. (Jack Boland/Toronto Sun)