“Where people need to keep their eyes fastened is the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is a long-term thinker, so go back to the beginning, what did he say about the Senate? And that’s where he’s going,” said the Conservative, who spoke to The Hill Times on the condition of anonymity.
“The strategy from what I can see is to let the thing fester.”
The senior Conservative said Prime Minister Harper (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) has already “started the ball rolling” by removing former Government Senate Leader Marjory LeBreton from Cabinet and having her say if the Senate cannot be reformed it should be abolished. “He’ll say, ‘We’ve seen all this happen, it’s very bad, we need to reform the Senate, we should do this or we should get rid of it.’ His political strategy is to give people two clear, opposite choices—drive the wedge right down the middle,” the Conservative said.
The Senate expense scandal, which has centered around now Independent Senators Mike Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau’s expense claims as well as those of now former Senator Mac Harb, has been a dark cloud hanging over the Upper Chamber since news stories broke in the fall of 2012. Mr. Harb, a former Liberal Senator, announced his resignation from the Senate on Aug. 26, and also announced that he had dropped his challenge of the Senate Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration Committee’s order that he repay a total of $231,649.07 in ineligible expense claims and has repaid the money. P.E.I. Sen. Duffy, Saskatchewan Sen. Wallin and Quebec Sen. Brazeau are all former Conservative Senators.
Over the past year the expense scandal has barely cooled and has continued to unfold with new developments. The Deloitte audit on Sen. Wallin’s expense claims, the last of a series of four, only came out on Aug. 12, and RCMP investigations into the expense claims of all four Senators are also currently underway. The Senators are being investigated for a potential breach of trust, and Sen. Duffy also faces an RCMP investigation related to an approximately $90,000 personal cheque he accepted from former PMO chief of staff Nigel Wright in order to pay back Parliament.
The senior Conservative source said that when Parliament returns in the fall, the government will say that the issue is non-partisan to get support. “You’ve got [former Liberal] Senator [Raymond] Lavigne, who’s in jail, and you’ve got Mac Harb, who quit rather than face the music, and then you’ve got people on the Conservative side. I think the question is, ‘is this an institutional issue or is this a personal issue?’” said the senior Conservative source.
Former Quebec Liberal senator Raymond Lavigne is currently two months into a six-month jail sentence after being convicted in 2011 of fraud and breach of trust after claiming more than $10,000 in false expense claims and having a Senate-paid staffer do personal work for him (cutting down trees on his property).
Tim Powers, vice-chair of Summa Strategies, said the long-term impacts of the Senate expense scandal are “hard to tell” at this point in time, but said “it doesn’t help that it continues to go forward.”
“I think you can’t do anything about what’s been done or what’s alleged to have been done, it’s how you respond to it all and I think the ongoing cooperation with the RCMP and any other bodies who may be investigating this is the right course of action,” said Mr. Powers, a former Conservative staffer.
Mr. Powers said he suspects the anticipated fall throne speech will have “some mention of Senate issues,” and said the constitutional reference on Senate reform currently before the Supreme Court of Canada will keep the “story alive.”
The Supreme Court is scheduled to begin the actual court hearings on the Senate reform constitutional reference on Nov. 12, 13 and 14. A constitutional reference on Senate reform is also currently before the Quebec Court of Appeal.
On Aug. 26, CTV News reported that Saskatchewan Conservative Senator David Tkachuk, former chair of the Senate Internal Economy, New Brunswick Conservative Senator Carolyn Stewart Olsen, a former press secretary to Mr. Harper, told Sen. Duffy that if he accepted Mr. Wright’s cheque to repay his expenses, the committee’s report on his audit would be less critical. Both Sen. Tkachuk and Sen. Stewart Olsen have denied the allegations and have called them false.
Sen. Tkachuk stepped down as the committee chair on June 11 in order to concentrate on his battle with cancer, and the committee is now chaired by Nova Scotia Conservative Senator Gerald Comeau. Sen. Stewart Olsen remains a member of that committee, as well as the three-member steering committee.
As well, another ongoing element in the Senate expense scandal is the breakdown of Sen. Wallin’s expense claims, of which she has been ordered to repay a total of about $138,000. The Deloitte audit divided Sen. Wallin’s overall $532,508 in expenses into three categories: $390,182 that they deemed eligible, $121,348 that they deemed ineligible, and approximately $20,000 in expenses where auditors were unsure whether or not they were eligible and asked the Senate Internal Economy to make that determination. Sen. Wallin has already repaid about $38,000.
The committee has since ordered Sen. Wallin to repay about $17,000 of that $20,000 figure, but Senate communications has declined to provide a breakdown of what expense claims make up that $17,000 of ineligible expenses, and in turn, what constitutes the $3,000 in eligible expenses. In response to questions from The Hill Times as to why a breakdown of these expenses was not being made publicly available, Senate communications said the administration can only provide information already in the public domain, and “the decision of the committee was communicated directly to Senator Wallin.”
Mr. Powers said the Senate should make that information publicly available.
“If you want to see the example of transparency, and there are many Senators who I believe want to do that, including members of the different committees who have been looking at these things, I think they should be as transparent as they can, unless for some reason there’s a security issue or a personal privacy issue that cannot be exposed,” he said.
Nova Scotia Opposition Senate Leader James Cowan said he has confidence the Senate Internal Economy committee “did their assessment appropriately.”
“Four Senators, for whatever reason, chose not to abide by those rules,” said Sen. Cowan. “In my view the rules are clear, I don’t have any difficulty in deciding what is appropriate for me to claim and what I should pay out of my own pocket.”
The auditor general’s office is currently planning out a “comprehensive” audit to be conducted of the individual expenses of Senators, but it remains to be seen the level of expenses of each Senator to be examined or the time period to be reviewed, or even what level of specifics, such as the Senator’s name, will be included. Either way, the auditor general’s office is lined up to be an unprecedented glimpse into the expense claims of Senators.
“The auditor general will be good in that way,” said the senior Conservative source. “What he’s doing will have a salutary effect on the Senate because it will be the first time probably ever that a bright light will be shone in dark corners, and this is good for everybody so henceforth everyone will be far more aware of what they’re doing with their expenses. … What it comes down to, it’s not Mike Duffy putting an extra $50 in his pockets, its how do you do politics? There is a grey line between what is acceptable and what isn’t acceptable.”
On Aug. 12, ahead of the Deloitte audit’s publication, Sen. Wallin held a press conference and said Deloitte’s audit process was flawed. “Travel expenses which were approved and paid by Senate Finance in 2009, in 2010, in 2011 have in a number of cases now been disallowed. The basis for this latter decision is apparently some arbitrary and undefined sense of what constitutes Senate business or common Senate practice,” said Sen. Wallin.
The Conservative source said while Auditor General Michael Ferguson’s report would come back with some recommendations that could clarify what is acceptable practice when claiming expenses, he will “bat the ball back” to the Senate “and say, there are problems, we need a set of clear rules that everybody understands.”
The senior Conservative source said members of the Conservative Party are less uneasy than might be expected because Sen. Wallin, Sen. Duffy and Sen. Brazeau “are not longtime Conservatives.”
“These are folks who were appointed to the Senate for a number of different reasons. So in that sense, it’s not as if they’re seen as one of the family that’s suddenly done bad things,” said the source.
Mr. Harper has signaled he will be proroguing Parliament, and Parliamentarians are expected to return around mid-October.
Sen. Cowan said starting in September, all Liberal Senators and MPs will be voluntarily posting all of their expenses online, in a level of disclosure similar to that of a minister, with a more specific breakdown of travel, hospitality and office expenses provided. Currently the Senate publishes the overall expenses on a quarterly basis.
“Everyone’s got their eyes fastened on the Senate, but an equal amount of attention should be paid to the House. The Senate is not the centre of all bad spending in Ottawa,” said the senior source.
Original Article
Source: hilltimes.com
Author: LAURA RYCKEWAERT
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