PM SAYS SENATE ‘ ON RIGHT TRACK’
• After nearly four years of scandal, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Wednesday said the Senate is “on the right track” with word the RCMP has cleared most, if not all, of the 30 senators under police review for questionable expense claims.
Police won’t comment on their findings, but sources said many of the senators under scrutiny have been notified in writing that RCMP reviews of their expense account files found nothing to warrant full criminal investigations.
“The majority of 30 have received word ( that) after a preliminary review ( the case) didn’t merit investigation,” said one source.
Another said it is “99- per- cent sure all 30 will be cleared.”
Several of the senators were informally notified as far back as last July.
Trudeau, i n New York seeking a United Nations’ Security Council seat for Canada, said the damaging series of internal financial audits, police scrutiny and the related and continuing criminal trial of Sen. Mike Duffy, “have led us to a place where I think we’re on the right track.”
The prolonged scandal “has highlighted the need for greater transparency, greater openness, greater accountability and, indeed, a distancing from partisanship and the patronage that has defined the Senate over recent years and, indeed, decades,” he said.
Trudeau’s contempt for the upper chamber culminated in January 2014, when he expelled 32 Liberal senators from the party caucus, forcing them to sit as “independent Liberals.”
Three months later, the Supreme Court declared Parliament could not unilaterally reform or abolish the Senate and needed the consent of at least seven provinces representing at least half the population.
“We’ve seen from the Supreme Court that it is not in the cards for us to simply wish the Senate away and therefore the Liberal government has undertaken to make significant steps to improve the way it functions and to restore its place of confidence in the minds of Canadians,” said Trudeau.
He is expected to soon name five new senators to sit as independents and to start filling 22 Senate vacancies.
The RCMP review of the senators’ expense claims was triggered l ast June when federal auditor general Michael Ferguson re- leased the results of a sweeping audit that found what he characterized as repeated abuses of taxpayer dollars and a need for wholesale culture change. Several defiant senators staunchly maintained they’ d done nothing wrong.
Ferguson’s 116- page audit report on the Senate found a “pervasive lack of evidence, or significant contradictory evidence” to support expense claims for some senators, including members of the upper chamber who billed the public for activities such as a fishing trip, attending a family funeral or ski shows, and travelling to a family member’s convocation.
Ferguson flagged the 30 senators for problematic or questionable expense claims between April 1, 2011, and March 31, 2013 and totalling almost $1 million.
The Senate referred the files of nine current and former senators to the RCMP. They included two sitting senators, Conservative Pierre- Hugues Boisvenu (who has resigned from the Tory caucus to sit as an Independent) and Senate Liberal Colin Kenny.
Boisvenu received word from the RCMP in February that he was cleared, said Daniel Couture, his director of parliamentary affairs.
Neither Kenny nor a spokesperson from his office could be reached for comment, but Kenny has previously denied any wrongdoing.
Also referred to the Mounties were the files of retired senators Gerry St. Germain, Don Oliver, Sharon Carstairs, Rose- Marie Losier- Cool, Bill Rompkey, Rod Zimmer and Marie-Paule Charette-Poulin.
The RCMP chose to review the files of the other 21 members as well, though it continues to decline to make any public comment on its involvement.
“Only in the event that an investigation results in the laying of criminal charges, would the RCMP confirm its investigation, the nature of any charges laid and the identity of the individual involved,” RCMP Cpl. Valerie Thibodeau said on Wednesday. One source said the files of the other 21 senators were reviewed so the Mounties could get a better sense of the scope of the expense claim issue.
Meanwhile, former Supreme Court justice Ian Binnie, who has acted as an arbitrator on the cases of 14 senators with questionable expense claims, is expected to release his binding findings to a Senate committee Monday.
NOT IN THE CARDS TO SIMPLY WISH THE SENATE AWAY.