Audit lays out Wallin’s ‘partisan’ expenses
Details prompt Senate to refer case to RCMP
OTTAWA — On April 15, 2011, Sen. Pamela Wallin drove from her home in Wadena, Sask., to attend a Here for Canada PM Rally in Saskatoon. Although she charged taxpayers only $230.88 for the trip, she was attending what was, in fact, a Conservative party election rally.
She said she was there for “Senate business” — the same explanation she provided for an event days later, on April 19, which the Conservative party told auditors was “a 2011 campaign visit on their behalf.” For that meeting, with members of the Muslim community, she charged taxpayers $235.28.
In each case — and in many others peppered throughout a detailed report on Wallin’s travel spending — auditors concluded the events were purely partisan in nature, and they at times helped raise funds for the Conservative party or one of its MPs. For that reason, the auditors said, they couldn’t be considered Senate business and she should not have charged taxpayers for them.
These kinds of details, outlined in a 91-page Deloitte report publicly released Tuesday, led a Senate committee overseeing Wallin’s spending audit to recommend that the RCMP be called in for a possible criminal investigation; that she pay back about $82,000 above what she’s already repaid for ineligible expenses; that she be grounded from travelling unless the Senate says she can fly; and that she put an end to her overnight stays in Toronto to break up trips between Ottawa and Saskatchewan.
The audit contains page after page challenging Wallin’s expense claims. There was, for example, a November 2009 trip to Calgary for the Grey Cup gala dinner for the Saskatchewan Roughriders that she attended as a special guest. Or the trips to take care of her private corporate responsibilities, which she claimed were OK’d by a fellow Saskatchewan senator.
In at least one case, the auditors couldn’t understand why Wallin travelled at all, citing a June 24-26, 2011 round trip between Ottawa and Toronto that cost taxpayers almost $3,000.
Wallin’s office told auditors that senators had to stay close to Ottawa as there were final votes on bills before the summer break. But “the senator received a living allowance for a secondary residence in (Ottawa) up to June 27, 2011. The senator could have remained in Ottawa at a reduced cost in order to fulfil her caucus obligations,” the auditors wrote. “As a result, this trip does not appear to be Senate business.”
Wallin’s problems with the Senate have steadily widened. Aside from what she has been ordered to repay, there is still the matter of about $20,000 in questionable travel, which auditors left in the committee’s hands to review.
That money is tied to auditors’ finding that Wallin spent about 35 per cent of her time — about 476 days over the last three years — in Toronto. As a senator, she represents Saskatchewan, where she spent 27 per cent of her time, or 368 days.
Wallin did not comment Tuesday. On Monday, however, she called the audit unfair and tainted, arguing travel spending rules codified in 2012 were being applied retroactively to her spending from 2009 onward.
Expense claims that Senate finance officials had approved for years were suddenly disallowed, with a recommendation they be repaid, raising the question of whether other senators could soon be caught up in a spending hunt.
“They’ve applied the rules retroactively. You can’t suck and blow at the same time,” Conservative Sen. Hugh Segal said.
“I’m not suggesting this exonerates her of making mistakes,” he told Postmedia News on Tuesday. “The problem with retroactive applications of standards is what seems to be appropriate now could be changed in new standards next year.”
Others were less sympathetic to Wallin. “We know that we can’t use our position here or the resources in the Senate to advance our own personal issues, and most of us don’t,” Liberal Senate leader James Cowan said.