Oda sought to defend herself, arguing that she was on official business at the time, but the hue and cry was too great and she stepped down just before an anticipated cabinet shuffle in which she was all but certain to be demoted or fired.
It was the proper result to an unacceptable display of official arrogance, entitlement and the squandering of public funds. And it set a benchmark that should now be applied to the equally egregious cases involving three members of the Senate: Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Mac Harb.
The trio have been asked to repay more than $190,000 in improperly claimed allowances, mostly related to housing. Senators are permitted to file for the expense of accommodation in Ottawa while they are away from their primary residence in the province they represent. An independent audit, released Thursday, found none of the three spent even a third of their time in the home they claimed as their main residence, yet billed taxpayers anyway. Brazeau was in Maniwaki, Que., his claimed residence, just 10% of the time; Harb was at his “home” in Westmeath, Ont. just 22% of the time and Duffy spent 70% of his time away from the cottage in Cavendish, P.E.I., preferring his home on a golf course near Ottawa.
None of the three has shown much in the way of contrition. Harb has quit the Liberal caucus and hired a lawyer to contest his treatment. Brazeau was evicted from the Conservative caucus and sits as an Independent. Duffy insists the rules on primary residences were too confusing (though the rest of the Senate appears to have figured them out) and repaid his $90,000 only after considerable public hounding. Reports Friday also indicated he claimed $1,000 in daily living allowance while on vacation in Florida, which he blamed on a “clerical error”, and “discovered” only after an “informal conversation” with the head of the Senate’s internal economy committee.
Although none of the three has been charged with a criminal offence, Liberal Senate leader James Cowan said it would be “appropriate” for the RCMP to investigate. The minimum response to the audit should be expulsion of all three from the Senate. An argument put forward by Senate majority leader Marjory LeBreton, that the rules governing senators’ primary and secondary residences were not clear enough, doesn’t wash. A senator is required by the Constitution to reside in the province he or she was appointed to represent. It shouldn’t require a forensic audit to understand that spending 70% to 90% of your time away from home doesn’t meet that test. Anyone arguing otherwise either isn’t trying too hard, or lacks the minimum intellectual capacity we should expect of Senate members.
Apart from the financial shenanigans confirmed by the audit, the attitudes displayed by Brazeau, Duffy and Harb — a mixture of defiance and contempt — should not be countenanced, either by the public or other senators. Duffy insisted against all evidence that he considered his home to be the small cottage in Cavendish, even after neighbours said they rarely saw him and photos depicted a cabin deep in snow that hadn’t been creased by tire-track or footprint. Harb claimed $43,056 for accommodations, meals, mileage and incidentals even though the bungalow he claimed as his primary home was less than a two-hour drive from Ottawa.
Just as Oda was brought down as much by her attitude as by her actions, Harb, Duffy and Brazeau have shown themselves to be unworthy of the respect that comes with position to which they were appointed. The unseemly saga they set off has undermined respect for the Senate and provided fuel to those who would be happy to see it abolished. “There is no more of the honour system around this place,” said LeBreton, noting that tougher oversight would be the rule in future.
She could easily have left the word “system” out of that sentence and been referring to the three senators in question.
Original Article
Source: fullcomment.nationalpost.com
Author: Kelly McParland
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