The Red Faced Chamber has demonstrated again that Liberal David Dingwall was not the only aquarium creature in Canada who thought he was ‘entitled to his entitlements’. They have again demonstrated with Bill Clinton that fellatio is not sex. It all depends on what “is” is.
External auditors at Deloitte have decided that “is” amounts to the fact that three senators — Mac Harb, Mike Duffy and Patrick Brazeau — all made improper claims on various expenses that can be paid to members of the not-so-august body.
We’re not talking chickenfeed here. The auditors want Brazeau to repay $48,744, and Harb, $51,482. Last March, Senator Duffy paid back $90,000.
Since almost all of the money to be returned has to do with improperly claimed housing allowances, let’s do a little test. I have four questions for you. What is your name? How old are you? What are you wearing? Where do you live?
I will go out on a long limb of slender circumference: You probably didn’t feel confused by any of this. Nor did you have to talk to your lawyer or accountant before you answered. Neither did you feel the need to consult a statute. And there is a good reason for that. These are questions that your average, street-proofed five-year-old could answer without hesitation.
The rules say that if you are a senator, and your principle dwelling is 100 kilometres or more from the National Capital Region (the 4,715 square kilometres around Ottawa surrounded by reality) you are eligible for a housing allowance of up to $22,000 per year. It all depends on knowing where you live.
Mac Harb claimed his principle dwelling was in Westmeath. Patrick Brazeau said he lived in Maniwaki. Mike Duffy put in for the housing allowance as a resident of P.E.I. It was all poppycock.
The auditors found that Conservative Senator Duffy spent just 30 per cent of the 549 days that were audited by Deloitte in his cottage in P.E.I. — which, for expense purposes, he described as his principle dwelling. Most of that 30 per cent was accounted for by the summer months. Still, I suppose, there is lots of Senate business at lobster dinners in Anne of Green Gables country when the beaches are crowded.
Liberal Senator Mac Harb spent just 21 per cent of his time in Westmeath, in a house neighbours said looked abandoned and which has now been sold. He has stepped out of the Liberal caucus and decided to fight the matter in court.
And as for Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau, facing criminal charges for assault and sexual assault on an unrelated matter, he was resident in his “principle” dwelling for just 10 per cent of the time period audited. Like Harb, Brazeau is now being audited for a more inclusive period of his expenses based on the creativity of previous claims.
With respect to Duffy, the Conservative chair of the Senate Committee on Internal Economy says the case is closed. But David Tkachuk is not totally reliable on the facts. He is the man who told reporters that no other senator’s expenses beyond Harb, Brazeau or Duffy had been sent out for external audit.
Sadly for Tkachuk, on the day he made that statement, a fourth senator, Pamela Wallin, confirmed to the Globe and Mail that she had met with Deloitte auditors over her Senate travel claims. That audit continues.
How, one might reasonably ask, could the chairman of the very committee investigating Senate expenses be out to such a long lunch? Or was it more that Senator Tkachuk would just as soon the Duffy case were over?
It has been reported that Tkachuk might have tipped off the P.E.I. senator about other problems with his expenses beyond the housing allowance.
The evidence for that story is a letter written on April 18th by Senator Duffy, obtained by the Canadian Press, referencing an April 16 conversation he had with Tkachuk.
As a result of that conversation, Duffy allegedly discovered that he had collected $1,000 in living allowance for 12 days when he was actually in Florida, not Ottawa. He blamed an incompetent part-time worker in his office for the false claim and agreed to pay the money back.
The date of April 16 is important, because that is the same day that Senator Tkachuk was briefed on the results of the Deloitte audit. Was the integrity of the audit breached by one Conservative senator helping out another?
The answer is that no one knows — yet.
In a further rebuke of Senator Tkachuk’s claim that Mike Duffy’s case is “closed”, CBC Radio’s The House has reported that the RCMP is preparing to examine the spending of the three senators who have been found by external auditors to have made improper expense claims. Was it confusion or fraud? CTV actually broke the story days earlier, but without the confirming comments of the Liberal Party’s Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, James Cowan.
What does it all mean? Just this. It is time once more to throw up on your shoes over the Senate. We all did that when Liberal Senator Andrew Thompson went missing in action for a decade at public expense — our man in Mexico.
This stable of political studs put out to pasture at public expense for party loyalties costs Canada $92.5 million annually in salaries, senator allowances and administrative costs. The House of Commons, with three times the number of members, costs $427 million. Do the math.
Each lottery winner in the Senate receives a base annual salary of $135,200. The Speaker of the Senate, currently Conservative Noel Kinsella, pulls down $187,500.
The government leader in the Senate, Marjory LeBreton, makes $207,800 a year, and the Opposition leader, Liberal James Cowan, $168,300. And not a single mother’s son or daughter of them is elected. The Americans figured out that an unelected Senate had no part in a democracy in 1911.
But that didn’t stop this unelected body from killing by stealth Bill C-311 after the House of Commons had passed the climate change bill. And this under a prime minister who once promised that he would never allow an unelected Senate to go against the will of the majority of Members of Parliament.
But then he also promised not to appoint a single senator. Reality check? By October 2015, 62 per cent of the 105-member Senate will have been appointed by Stephen Harper.
The toxically-loyal Marjory LeBreton, in her attempt to sweep the current muck under the rug, inadvertently defined the problem with this festering dead body from the nineteenth century. Referring to new, very tough rules put in place to deal with unscrupulous senators, she said, “There’s no more of the honour system around this place.”
But the last word to the prime minister. He invites you to believe that knowing where you live is a murky question. Capiche?
Original Article
Source: ipolitics.ca
Author: Michael Harris
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