Clarkson spent more than revealed: sources

Clarkson hit $206,000 limit, sources say

OTTAWA • As Rideau Hall prepares a “thorough review” of the lifetime expense program for former governors general, the National Post has learned Adrienne Clarkson’s expense claims since leaving office are substantially higher than revealed by the public accounts, in some years reaching the program’s annual spending limit of $206,000. There is no allegation that Clarkson has ever broken any rules. However, she has taken full advantage of the littleknown program that funds the activities of former governors general, and sources told the Post that over the years Clarkson has been the strongest opponent of reforming it, and that Clarkson had specifically resisted the possibility of her expenses being disclosed publicly. The Post has spoken to three people with direct knowledge of the program to better understand its history and how it works. They would speak only on the condition their names not be published, as they either do not want to jeopardize their relationship with Rideau Hall or are not authorized to discuss the program. The expenses program was originally created in 1979 with the idea that outgoing governors general still had public duties related to their time in office, and should receive some support to fulfil them. At present the program requires essentially no public disclosure of what expenses the former governors general are claiming. That contrasts with the practice of the rest of government, where most expense claims are either proactively disclosed or available upon access-to-information requests.

Even Rideau Hall itself, which is exempt from access-to-information requests, now proactively discloses travel and hospitality expense claims by its senior staff. The only information about the expenses of former governors general emerges through a quirk of accounting, where a supplier charging more than $100,000 to the government is identified individually in the government’s public accounts. That is how Clarkson gets singled out nearly every year: she regularly charges more than $100,000 in the Temporary Help Services line item, so she appears as a supplier in the public accounts. However, sources told the Post this represents only a portion of the expense claims Clarkson has filed each year, accounting for expenses related to running her office. Other expenses such as travel and hospitality are filed under different line items, but do not appear in the public accounts because as a budget line item they don’t total more than $100,000. The current annual limit on the program is $206,000, according to one source, and Clarkson has spent to that limit in multiple years since she left Rideau Hall in 2005. That means her total expenses since then are well over the $1.1 million currently revealed via the public accounts. Clarkson, who is travelling in Europe, has declined to respond to the Post’s several requests for comment. However, after days of intense media scrutiny following the Post’s report on her expenses, she provided an op-ed to The Globe and Mail defending her use of the program. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his intention to review the program on Oct. 31, the day after the Post’s initial report. In a statement Monday, Rideau Hall said it is fully on board with that review. “The Office of the Governor General supports the government’s intention to review the reimbursement program that was put in place in 1979 during Governor General Schreyer’s mandate,” said a statement from Natalie Babin Dufresne, Rideau Hall’s director of communications. “As stated by the Prime Minister, this program will undergo a thorough review in collaboration with government to ensure that reimbursements are aligned with values of transparency and accountability.” Over time, the program created concern in the Office of the Governor General that there weren’t enough clear rules around the expenditures — particularly given the fact that former governors general were still filing expenses a decade or more after they retired. In 2012, during David Johnston’s tenure, Rideau Hall drafted some proposed guidelines for use of the program, seeking to apply clearer standards and rules. When the proposal was circulated among the living former governors general, according to two sources, Clarkson pushed back hardest on the proposed guidelines. After some changes, they were adopted in the fall of that year. Babin Dufresne confirmed the existence of the 2012 guidelines, and said they were intended “to provide guidance and oversight in the use of funds made available to former governors general.” All three sources who spoke to the Post felt it is reasonable for Rideau Hall to give some administrative support to former governors general, and argue it is in line with what other democracies do for the representatives of their heads of state. “I find some of the outrage is a bit unfair,” said one. “The role of governor general is different. Of course there is no other office that has this kind of arrangement. The governor general is in a position unlike all others.” In the case of Clarkson, for example, she is Colonel-in-Chief of the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry and thus has some official duties with the Canadian Forces. However, they acknowledged the lack of transparency around what the money is actually going towards, and said they found it hard to defend the indefinite time period during which former governors general can draw on the public purse. Ed Schreyer, for example, still files expense claims with Rideau Hall despite not having been governor general since 1984, and having re-entered partisan politics in 2006 to run for the House of Commons as a New Democrat (he lost to Conservative MP James Bezan). Clarkson has also waded into political commentary since leaving office, criticizing the government of outgoing prime minister Stephen Harper on social media after the 2015 election. In her op-ed for the Globe, Clarkson offered some details of her schedule. “Last year, I fulfilled 182 commitments, many of them public events,” she wrote. “I gave 16 speeches with no honorarium or fees, and 10 pieces of writing for no fee. All of this was related to my life as Canada’s 26th governor-general, and all of this came to me at the request of Canadians.” She said her expenses are “in line” with the support given to other former governors general and said she has followed Rideau Hall’s instructions on the use of the program. Clarkson also said she does not draw a salary from her charitable institution, which was created with public funding. “The existence of this program has never been secret,” Clarkson wrote. But she did not address whether the expenses should be disclosed to the public — nor the fact that almost every MP asked by reporters last week said they were surprised to learn of the program. “It sounds very curious but I don’t feel that I have enough information to have an opinion on it, to be honest with you,” said Conservative MP Tony Clement, the former president of the Treasury Board, last week. Even Trudeau said he had only “seen the reports the same as others are” when first asked about the program on Oct. 31. “We’re going to take a look at what best practices could be in terms of supporting people who’ve served Canada in the vice-regal capacity,” he said. Asked for more detail about how the government would be conducting the review, a Prime Minister’s Office spokesperson said they had nothing to add to Trudeau’s remarks.