The House of Commons resumed sitting Monday, but the only way the public has of knowing if their elected representative is on the job is by watching for a glimpse of them sitting behind their parliamentary desks.

Although senators' attendance records in the upper chamber are made public, the attendance records of Members of Parliament are kept strictly confidential.

But according to the website HowdTheyVote.ca, 29 MPs missed more than 50 days of the current session of Parliament, all but nine of them Liberals.

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff was absent 135 times, the top absentee MP according to the non-partisan website, while Bloc Quebecois member Francine Lalonde missed 113 days and Liberal backbencher Keith Martin 102.

"For the leaders it's very understandable," CTV Ottawa bureau chief Robert Fife told News Channel. "The leaders have other duties than just showing up in the House for votes.

"I don't think we should certainly fault the leaders for not being there very often."

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was 11th on the list, having been absent 74 times.

Yet NDP Leader Jack Layton was 144th, with only 17 absences on his record.

Only eight of the 308 members of the House of Commons could boast perfect attendance records, seven of them Tories and one a Liberal.

Fife said the Opposition Liberals appear to be heavily over-represented on the list of MPs missing in action.

"People will have to be asked then why it's mostly Liberals who aren't there very often," he said "Is it because they don't like being on the opposition benches?"

An investigation by the Globe and Mail, published Monday, correlated the MPs' absences with votes on bills in the House and found that 17 members, most of them Liberals, have missed at least a quarter of the votes in the past two years.

Liberal backbenchers Jim Karygiannis, Keith Martin and Ruby Dhalla came close to missing half of the more than 300 votes Parliament took between November, 2008, and December, 2010, according to the newspaper.

"Is it because someone is not in Ottawa or not voting that he's not carrying his weight?" Liberal Whip Marcel Proulx wondered.

"That's a very good debate. I'm not trying to excuse members who are delinquents as far as not coming to votes. Where do you draw the line?"

Every MP is required to file a monthly statement in which they must account for any days missed by checking off one of three reasons: illness, official business, or other.

Their reasons for the absences are shielded from the public.

Fife said MPs were not eager to discuss the issue for the record. "None of them want to come on camera and talk to us," he said.

But he said one former Conservative MP, Inky Mark, offered one reason for his previous absences: "He said he didn't show up because he couldn't stand his boss, Stephen Harper."

Despite a Conservative promise in the last election campaign to lift what Harper once called the "cloak of secrecy" surrounding government, there is no sign that the long-standing tradition of secrecy over MP attendance will change anytime soon.

Asked by The Globe and Mail if the Tories would consider making the records public, party Whip Gordon O'Connor had a blunt, one-word response: "No."

The opposition parties said they are willing to open their books - but none was willing to go first and all made unanimous support a condition of transparency.

O'Connor said there are many reasons to keep the attendance and reasons for absences secret, including medical conditions or family matters that ought to be kept private.

"I am not going to have an open debate."

Heather Bradley, spokeswoman for House Speaker Peter Milliken, said the Commons works on the "honour system" and that attendance "has not been an issue."

And that holds up for most MPs. Three-quarters of the MPs were present for almost 90 per cent of the votes in the House.