Senator Mike Duffy says he will repay thousands of dollars in housing allowances, saying he may have made mistakes in claiming his primary residence as being in Prince Edward Island.Duffy made the comments in a television interview with CBC Friday afternoon.
“To put all this behind us, we are gong to voluntarily pay back my living expenses,” Duffy said in the live television interview.
“Until the rules are cleared, and they’re not clear now…I will not claim a housing allowance.”
He has been under investigation, along with two other senators, for claiming more than $33,000 over the past three years. The results of an audit into their expenses was expected sometime next month.Tory and Liberal leaders in the Senate had asked the committee charged with investigating the housing claims to force anyone who couldn’t prove they played by the rules should repay the money with interest.
Duffy said the problem was that the rules about regarding claiming a secondary allowance for housing were unclear.
He said the Senate form that is required once a year is vague and “I may have made a mistake in filling out this form.”
But the paperwork in question — a yearly declaration of primary and secondary residences —hardly seems complicated.
Senators are required to fill out the declaration to determine if they are entitled to the housing allowance, intended to compensate those who maintain a secondary residence in the national capital region while fulfilling their parliamentary duties.
The residency declaration, which Duffy described as “vague,” required the senator to fill in the address of his primary residence in the province he was appointed to represent.
Hence, he filled in the address of his Cavendish cottage in Prince Edward Island, not his home in the Ottawa suburb of Kanata, where he lived for years before his appointment to the Senate.
What Duffy doesn’t mention is that the declaration also asks senators to check a box indicating whether or not their primary residence is within 100 kilometres of Parliament Hill.
In order to obtain the allowance, Duffy would have had to tick the box saying his primary residence is outside the capital region.
The declaration also asks for information regarding a senator’s secondary residence in the capital region — a section “to be filled only by senators whose primary residence is more than 100 kilometres from Parliament Hill.”
The form goes on to spell out the conditions for being reimbursed for ownership or rental of a secondary residence in the national capital region.
The section concludes with another box which Duffy would have had to check to collect the allowance, declaring that “I own a secondary residence in the NRC and meet the above conditions.”
Original Article
Source: news.nationalpost.com
Author: Jordan Press
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