Wallin audit may have broader implications

OTTAWA — After months of speculation and rumours, Pamela Wallin and a small group of her Senate colleagues discover Monday what auditors have unearthed during months spent poring through her travel expenses of the last three years.

The following day, Tuesday, Wallin finds out her fate as the Senate’s internal economy committee reaches conclusions and decides on a course of action, including the possibility of sending her audit to the RCMP for a further look.

But beyond the future of the Saskatchewan senator herself, the Wallin affair may carry wider implications for the upper chamber and its members, challenging what sort of work actually constitutes Senate business. While Wallin has come under fire for her travel bills, there has also been scrutiny of what she does when she travels, and the questions don’t simply revolve around her work with corporate boards.

If the audit, or the Senate committee, finds some of her other work doesn’t meet a sometimes nebulous definition of Senate business, other members of the red chamber may end up scrutinizing their own activities and advocacy roles. First, the Wallin audit. The study of her three-year travel bill of more than $360,000 may be damaging to the former Conservative senator as auditors detail expenses the Senate paid that possibly should have been charged to one of the corporate boards Wallin served on.

They’ll also go through how much in additional costs she may have wracked up by staying overnight in Toronto on her way to Saskatchewan, which she represents in the Senate.

The outside auditors from Deloitte are also likely to detail trips for which Wallin has repaid the Senate, and possibly identify other travel claims that may not have wholly been for Senate business in the eyes of the auditors.

Wallin has travelled extensively over the last three years, across Canada and to the United States.

Her trips have taken her to Calgary, Halifax, Toronto, Afghanistan, Whitehorse, Regina, Edmonton, New York City and Washington, among other locations identified by Postmedia News through her newsletters, social media and legacy media sources.

“It’s a big country and I do travel a lot as a senator — not on holiday, but giving speeches, moderating panel discussions, discussing public policy, and showing up when it comes to supporting men and women who serve in the military. It is one of the great privileges of being a senator — that we get the chance to meet people all across this great country,” Wallin wrote in her most recent online newsletter, posted in April.

Yet many senators are worried that the Wallin audit will be another indictment of the red chamber’s ability — or lack thereof — to exercise effective oversight of senators spending.

But just as concerning for the upper chamber’s members is how the findings will affect the travel of other senators who regularly jet off to speak to groups or promote personal causes, such as Sen. Romeo Dallaire, who travels to speak out against the use of child soldiers, or Sen. Jim Munson, who speaks out for those struggling with autism.

Those senators may find themselves challenged in future unless their work relates directly to legislation or a study under review in the Senate.