ONLY A DAY AFTER TWO LIBERAL STAFFERS
REPAID TENS OF THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS IN ‘ENTITLEMENTS,’ TWO MORE LIBERALS WILL REPAY MORE THAN $50,000. JOHN IVISON REPORTS.
Two more senior Liberal staffers who received six-figure relocation expense payments have decided they are not, after all, entitled to their entitlements.
Julian Ovens, chief of staff to Global Affairs Minister Stéphane Dion, and Elder Marques, chief to Economic Development Minister Navdeep Bains, issued statements late Friday saying they are following the lead set by Gerald Butts, Justin Trudeau’s principal secretary, and Katie Telford, the prime minister’s chief of staff, by reimbursing some of the expenses they received for moving to Ottawa.
Ovens was hired by Dion from his job as head of strategy for BHP Billiton in Saskatoon. He said he will repay $32,130 of the $119,825 he received for expenses “submitted and reimbursed in good faith.”
Marques was a former trial lawyer with McCarthy Tétrault in Toronto. He said he will repay $22,467 of the $103,997 he was paid.
In its first nine months in office, the Liberals expensed $1.1 million for political staff relocation costs, including $116,330 paid to three staffers in Catherine McKenna’s Environment office.
The repayments by Ovens and Marques follow this week’s news that Butts and Telford were reimbursed for moving costs totalling $207,000 ($126,669 for Butts; $80,383 for Telford. He has since said he will repay $41,618 and she will pay back $23,373).
To put all this in context, the policies governing these payouts are long-standing. Bardish Chagger, the government’s new House Leader, pointed out in the Commons that the Conservative PMO played the same game, racking up $300,000 in relocation fees, (albeit over nine years, not nine months), including one payment of $93,131.
One senior Conservative admitted that if he had wanted to move a senior person to Ottawa, he would have urged Stephen Harper to pay full moving expenses.
Guy Giorno, a former Harper chief of staff, wrote Friday that the idea Trudeau approved any specific item was “ridiculous.”
It is common practice in the private and public sectors, where the only way to persuade foreign affairs staff to move country is to cover their expenses.
Without the lubrication of relocation fees, the labour market would seize up.
A minor panic has broken out in the Global Affairs department at the prospect that these perquisites may now be under threat.
The problem is not the concept; it’s the amounts.
The government’s relocation directive is encyclopedic about what is a legitimate claim, down to the shipment of pets and the tuning of pianos.
It appears that senior Liberals resolved that if they could claim, they would, safe in the knowledge that they would be sanctioned by their political bosses.
Most of the recipients made full use of the payment fund called “personalized case payout and incidentals,” which is meant to cover building inspections, car rentals and the like but sounds like a taxpayer-funded ATM. (Marques is alone in saying he did not receive a personalized cash payout; he is reimbursing most of the money he received to cover land transfer tax.)
In the reforms now promised by the government, the cash payouts should be the first candidate for the chop.
But the damage to the Liberals may already be done.
The Conservatives are making the case that by signing off on the relocation expenses for PMO staff, Trudeau displayed a lack of judgment.
Giorno’s experience suggests that Trudeau may not have even seen the numbers.
But that is unlikely to allay the suspicion among many Canadians that this government is cavalier when it comes to that most delicious of privileges — spending other people’s money.
The opposition parties will now make political hay with the claim that, by signing off on six-figure relocation packages, the prime minister is disconnected from economic reality, the product of his privileged background.
The Liberals now have to be very careful not to validate these claims further.
They are not very good at being humble, mainly because they see no reason to be. In their opinion, they’re brilliant at being in government.
But “pad-scam,” as it is already being christened, may be a timely lesson in humility, saving them from future hubris before a sense of entitlement becomes indelible.