The total bill of $231,649.07 was contained in a letter sent to Harb earlier this month.
A spokesman for Sen. David Tkachuk, who will soon step down as chairman of the Senate’s internal economy committee, said Harb is being asked to repay about $146,000 in living expenses, almost $44,000 in mileage claims, and about $41,000 in interest.
That figure is based on a review dating back seven years that the Senate ordered on Harb’s living expenses – after it originally ordered him to repay about $51,000 in housing claims including interest for the period of April 1, 2011 to Sept. 30, 2012.
The committee determined Harb didn’t spend enough time at his declared primary residency in Westmeath, Ont., about 140 kilometres from Parliament Hill. Senators must have their primary residence at least 100 kilometres from Parliament Hill in order to claim a $22,000 a year housing subsidy.
Prior to Harb’s claiming he lived in Westmeath, Ont., an audit of his expenses showed him claiming his primary residence in Cobden, Ont., about 120 kilometres from Parliament Hill. Deloitte, an outside auditor, found he was spending only about 20 per cent of his time at either residence, which the internal economy committee felt was not enough time to qualify either as a primary residence.
Official letters asking for repayment have gone to Harb and to Sen. Patrick Brazeau. The Senate has ordered Brazeau to repay about $49,000 in housing claims.
The internal economy committee has not heard back from either senator.
The Senate has the ability to garnishee a senator’s wages, but it wasn’t clear whether the upper chamber would take this route.
Harb was not immediately available for comment but earlier indicated he intended to fight the ruling. He has also stepped away from the Liberal caucus.
Liberal leaser Justin Trudeau said Wednesday if Harb is “cleared” – presumably through some legal action – “he will be invited back to the Liberal caucus, but if he is guilty, he will not. That’s it.”
Trudeau said he had only spoken to Harb once about the housing claims — when it was decided Harb would no longer be part of the Liberal caucus.
The committee has also taken no decision on whether to ask four senators under auditors’ eyes — Sen. Mike Duffy, Harb, Brazeau and Sen. Pamela Wallin — to foot the bill of more than $200,000 for audit reviews conducted on their affairs by Deloitte. Wallin’s auditors are to meet with the internal economy committee Thursday and the meeting is expected to be public.
Wallin has already repaid about $38,000 in questionable travel claims, and Duffy’s expense bill of over $90,000 was repaid in March with help from a personal cheque from Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s then-chief of staff, Nigel Wright.
Wright was forced to resign days after the cheque payment was revealed. Duffy and Wallin have both left the Conservative caucus.
The government continued to face calls Wednesday to produce the personal cheque Wright gave Duffy to help him repay his housing expenses.
Heritage Minister James Moore, answering questions in the House of Commons, said the government doesn’t have access to the cheque.
“We do not have access to a private personal cheque by Nigel Wright. We do not have access to it. That is just the reality,” Moore said. “What the prime minister said was that there is an independent process that has access to any documents that it requires in order to answer the questions the public have about this matter.”
In London Wednesday as part of an eight-day European trip, Harper told reporters he had “nothing more to say” on the Senate affair.
“Mr. Wright is speaking to the (federal) ethics commissioner and he will be accountable for his actions to the commissioner. And beyond that, I have nothing more to say on the matter,” Harper said.
The Senate itself is poised to start a debate Thursday on a Liberal proposal to create a special committee to better define its requirement that senators actually be residents of the provinces they represent.
That requirement has not been redefined in decades.
“What the Constitution intended is that you have some real connection to your province and it’s not enough to own a piece of property,” said Liberal Senate leader James Cowan.
Whatever guidelines the Senate lays down, Cowan said, they would only apply to senators appointed after adoption of any new rules and not retroactively to those already in the chamber.
“You can’t make them apply retroactively,” Cowan said. “What would be a good solution would to be come up with a clearer idea of what it means.”
Some experts say the question shouldn’t be all that difficult to resolve. When senators make expense claims for secondary housing in the nation’s capital, they have to produce a health card, driver’s licence, voting card and tax return bearing the address of the main residence they keep in their home province. These documents are precisely the tools that could be used to establish residency for the purposes of determining whether someone can represent a particular province, experts suggest.
Currently – and perhaps surprisingly – the only test of official residency is a declaration senators sign at the start of each new Parliament, in which they swear to being residents of their respective provinces.
Original Article
Source: canada.com
Author: Jordan Press
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