The reports show Sen. Wallin’s expense claims for travel other than to Saskatchewan, which she represents in the Senate, dropped to $24,323 for the calendar quarter from Dec. 1, 2012, to Feb. 28, 2013, from an average of $35,670 per quarter going back to November 2010.
By the end of this past May, after the Senate had retained the national accounting firm Deloitte for a forensic review of travel and expense claims for three other Senators, and a separate audit of Sen. Wallin’s travel claims, Sen. Wallin’s claims had turned around completely, with $24,364 in expenses for regular trips to Saskatchewan and only $16,183 for other trips.
Deloitte on Monday submitted a secret report on its forensic review of Sen. Wallin’s travel expenses to the steering committee of the Senate Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration Committee, which began reviewing the report at a full session of the committee Monday evening.
The report was to be made public on Tuesday, but CBC quoted unnamed sources on Monday to report the Deloitte audit says three of Sen. Wallin’s former executive assistants told the accounting firm she altered expense reports retroactively, apparently as the controversy grew over the past months.
CBC also reported Sen. Wallin, who Prime Minister Stephen Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) appointed to the Upper Chamber in 2009, claimed a total of $120,000 in questionable travel expenses.
Sen. Wallin, who was also given a copy of the report on Monday, earlier repaid the Senate $38,000 in impugned travel expenses, which she admitted in an interview last June, with CBC’s The National anchor Peter Mansbridge, actually should have been charged to “third parties” for meetings she attended on private business.
“They’re business related, the ones that should have been paid by a third party, those are the ones I just took on right away, those repayments I made instantly, because it’s clear they were mistakes, more like a board or some other event, it was just a mistake, it was literally, not a good one, but an honest one,” Sen. Wallin said in response to questions from Mr. Mansbridge, a former colleague of Sen. Wallin’s during her time as a star anchor and interviewer at the CBC.
In the interview, which took place as she awaited an expected mid-summer release of the Deloitte report on her expenses, Sen. Wallin denied her travel expenses were related to Conservative Party affairs and suggested at one point her Senate staff made errors when they prepared the travel claim forms.
She made the comment after explaining she accepted her Senate post, after earlier assignments from Mr. Harper on other fronts, because the Senate was “something I could usefully contribute to, and try and make a difference.”
“It means you’re busy, so I do everything whole hog, I kind of throw myself into it, and what I didn’t do was mind the shop properly, right. There’s a lot of paperwork, particularly in government, every time you move, every time you go anywhere, sort of more paperwork than is humanly possible to keep on top of, so I made mistakes.”
Mr. Mansbridge asked Ms. Wallin whether the mistakes were hers, or those of her staff. “I sign the documents, so I take responsibility. I take full responsibility for this. I should have gone over it with a fine tooth comb as anybody should and, to make sure, but I just didn’t,” she said, noting that she moved to correct some of her mistakes “long before there was any audit” of her travel expenses.
Sen. Wallin resigned from the Conservative caucus last May over the controversy.
The Senate expense reports show the other five Senators representing Saskatchewan spent far less on travel other than to the province, and more than Sen. Wallin on travel directly to the province.
Ms. Wallin explained to Mr. Mansbridge she had a practice of travelling indirectly to reach Wadena, her hometown and her designated primary residence in Saskatchewan, and using the trips for appearances or events in other provinces on her way from Ottawa.
“This whole question of going to Saskatchewan directly. They have two categories of travel, regular and other. Your regular travel is when you go home, but they want you to get on a plane and go directly there. That isn’t how I operate. If I have a day, like a Friday, where I can go to Edmonton or Halifax or Toronto and do a speech or do an event I will do that on the way home. I’m still going home. That doesn’t count as travel to my home, it counts as other. So the numbers in this category are large. They’re large for people who say, ‘Why isn’t she going to Saskatchewan?’” Ms. Wallin said.
“Well I was, I was there 168 days last year, so I got there somehow, I just did it sometimes not directly, there are no direct flights out of Ottawa, anybody who tries to fly to Saskatchewan or leave Saskatchewan knows how difficult it is,” she said.
Sen. Wallin resigned from several corporate boards after her expenses came under scrutiny.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: TIM NAUMETZ
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