Meredith case reveals Senate transparency failure

Meredith case, expenses are major flaws, Daniel Tsai says.

Chalk it up as a win for the women.

After months of campaigning by senators Marilou McPhedran, Kim Pate, Josée Verner and other female senators, the Senate has finally agreed to compensate the women who were abused by Sen. Don Meredith.

In the #metoo era, such settlements are sadly all too common. But in the Senate of Canada, this public admission of the harassment problem and compensation of victims is a first.

When the allegations about Meredith surfaced, then-speaker Leo Housakos ordered the Senate Ethics Officer (SEO) to conduct a “workplace assessment.” That report has never been made public; Housakos claimed the SEO's work was secret and protected by parliamentary privilege. Female senators complained privilege was more about protecting Meredith than bringing justice to the victims.

Finally, after months of pressuring the Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration (CIBA), the Senate's management committee retained retired Quebec Judge Louise Otis to deal with Meredith's victims. Otis interviewed the victims and found Meredith's office was a “poisoned work environment” characterized by kissing, touching, humiliating, demeaning, intimidating and belittling behaviour.

As a result, the Senate will pay almost $500,000 in compensation plus legal fees to the nine Senate staff who worked for Meredith.

Sen. Sabi Marwah, who chairs CIBA, issued a statement expressing regret for the Meredith affairs. However, he pointedly did not say that he or the Senate were “sorry” for the years of anguish suffered by the victims.

Female senators have also pressured the institution into setting up a hotline for employees to report harassment or bullying.

Next up on the female senators reform agenda: the independent oversight of senators' expenses.

Last week, without debate, Conservative Sen. David Wells pushed through a plan that falls far short of the open and transparent scheme recommended by the auditor general back in 2015. Wells calls his plan a “model for the world.”

Former Senate ethics officer Jean Fourier, in The Hill Times, called it a sham. “For five years, senators delayed, dithered and dawdled, and finally rejected the AG's recommendation.” Fournier says the Wells plan “reflects very poorly on the Senate.

“Now a majority of three senators will review the spending of their peers and make final decisions on whether those expenses comply with the rules, policies and guidelines, and whether the amounts should be repaid by senators. This is not good enough. Put simply, this is a matter of public trust and integrity.”

Fournier's view was echoed by Manitoba Independent Sen. Marilou McPhedran who declared, “It is a gross exaggeration to say this is anything close to a leading example of responsible oversight.”

In secret negotiations, Wells and Conservative senators convinced Yuen Pau Woo and the leadership of the Independent Senators Group (ISG) to abandon transparency and support this flawed expense proposal.

Sen. Peter Harder, who served as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's representative in the Senate, has warned that a plan like this, which falls short of the auditor general's independent oversight proposal, risks that “powerful senators constituting the Internal Economy Committee may protect their own allies, shelter the Senate from scrutiny or even, in an overtly partisan context, settle political scores.”

Some ISG senators who came to Ottawa to help make change feel betrayed by their leadership. Manitoba Sen. Dr. Mary Jane McCallum accuses ISG leadership of “elitism and privilege.”

“My perception is there is an inner circle who have the privilege of determining the outcomes and decisions” including “unilateral decision-making and lack of transparency within our group,” Blacklock's Reporter quoted her as saying.

Now we have what is being referred to as a “necessary compromise” in gutting the plan for a new independent expense oversight mechanism.

Part of the reason for appointing “independent” senators was to bring the Senate into the 21st century. The “necessary compromise” on expense oversight betrays Trudeau's Senate reform plan — and leaves the institution stuck firmly in the past.

More work for the activist female senators.